improbably suggested by the
parti-hued, and rather plumagy aspect of the stranger, no bigot it would
seem, but a liberalist, in dress, and whose wardrobe, almost anywhere
than on the liberal Mississippi, used to all sorts of fantastic
informalities, might, even to observers less critical than the bachelor,
have looked, if anything, a little out of the common; but not more so
perhaps, than, considering the bear and raccoon costume, the bachelor's
own appearance. In short, the stranger sported a vesture barred with
various hues, that of the cochineal predominating, in style
participating of a Highland plaid, Emir's robe, and French blouse; from
its plaited sort of front peeped glimpses of a flowered regatta-shirt,
while, for the rest, white trowsers of ample duck flowed over
maroon-colored slippers, and a jaunty smoking-cap of regal purple
crowned him off at top; king of traveled good-fellows, evidently.
Grotesque as all was, nothing looked stiff or unused; all showed signs
of easy service, the least wonted thing setting like a wonted glove.
That genial hand, which had just been laid on the ungenial shoulder, was
now carelessly thrust down before him, sailor-fashion, into a sort of
Indian belt, confining the redundant vesture; the other held, by its
long bright cherry-stem, a Nuremburgh pipe in blast, its great porcelain
bowl painted in miniature with linked crests and arms of interlinked
nations--a florid show. As by subtle saturations of its mellowing
essence the tobacco had ripened the bowl, so it looked as if something
similar of the interior spirit came rosily out on the cheek. But rosy
pipe-bowl, or rosy countenance, all was lost on that unrosy man, the
bachelor, who, waiting a moment till the commotion, caused by the boat's
renewed progress, had a little abated, thus continued:

"Hark ye," jeeringly eying the cap and belt, "did you ever see Signor
Marzetti in the African pantomime?"

"No;--good performer?"

"Excellent; plays the intelligent ape till he seems it. With such
naturalness can a being endowed with an immortal spirit enter into that
of a monkey. But where's your tail? In the pantomime, Marzetti, no
hypocrite in his monkery, prides himself on that."

The stranger, now at rest, sideways and genially, on one hip, his right
leg cavalierly crossed before the other, the toe of his vertical slipper
pointed easily down on the deck, whiffed out a long, leisurely sort of
indifferent and charitable puff, betoken