hat against present expectation the lad should, after
all, evince some little undesirable trait, do not, respected sir, rashly
dismiss him. Have but patience, have but confidence. Those transient
vices will, ere long, fall out, and be replaced by the sound, firm, even
and permanent virtues. Ah," glancing shoreward, towards a
grotesquely-shaped bluff, "there's the Devil's Joke, as they call it:
the bell for landing will shortly ring. I must go look up the cook I
brought for the innkeeper at Cairo."

CHAPTER XXIII.

IN WHICH THE POWERFUL EFFECT OF NATURAL SCENERY IS EVINCED IN THE CASE
OF THE MISSOURIAN, WHO, IN VIEW OF THE REGION ROUND-ABOUT CAIRO, HAS A
RETURN OF HIS CHILLY FIT.

At Cairo, the old established firm of Fever & Ague is still settling up
its unfinished business; that Creole grave-digger, Yellow Jack--his hand
at the mattock and spade has not lost its cunning; while Don Saturninus
Typhus taking his constitutional with Death, Calvin Edson and three
undertakers, in the morass, snuffs up the mephitic breeze with zest.

In the dank twilight, fanned with mosquitoes, and sparkling with
fire-flies, the boat now lies before Cairo. She has landed certain
passengers, and tarries for the coming of expected ones. Leaning over
the rail on the inshore side, the Missourian eyes through the dubious
medium that swampy and squalid domain; and over it audibly mumbles his
cynical mind to himself, as Apermantus' dog may have mumbled his bone.
He bethinks him that the man with the brass-plate was to land on this
villainous bank, and for that cause, if no other, begins to suspect him.
Like one beginning to rouse himself from a dose of chloroform
treacherously given, he half divines, too, that he, the philosopher,
had unwittingly been betrayed into being an unphilosophical dupe. To
what vicissitudes of light and shade is man subject! He ponders the
mystery of human subjectivity in general. He thinks he perceives with
Crossbones, his favorite author, that, as one may wake up well in the
morning, very well, indeed, and brisk as a buck, I thank you, but ere
bed-time get under the weather, there is no telling how--so one may wake
up wise, and slow of assent, very wise and very slow, I assure you, and
for all that, before night, by like trick in the atmosphere, be left in
the lurch a ninny. Health and wisdom equally precious, and equally
little as unfluctuating possessions to be relied on.

But where was slipped in the ente