a year afterwards, you would find
him walking under the palm-trees arm in arm with a pretty woman.

Where would she come from?

Oh, that 's the miracle!

--I was just as certain, when I saw that fine, high-colored youth at the
upper right-hand corner of our table, that there would appear some
fitting feminine counterpart to him, as if I had been a clairvoyant,
seeing it all beforehand.

--I have a fancy that those Marylanders are just about near enough to the
sun to ripen well.--How some of us fellows remember Joe and Harry,
Baltimoreans, both! Joe, with his cheeks like lady-apples, and his eyes
like black-heart cherries, and his teeth like the whiteness of the flesh
of cocoanuts, and his laugh that set the chandelier-drops rattling
overhead, as we sat at our sparkling banquets in those gay times! Harry,
champion, by acclamation, of the college heavy-weights, broad-shouldered,
bull-necked, square-jawed, six feet and trimmings, a little science, lots
of pluck, good-natured as a steer in peace, formidable as a red-eyed
bison in the crack of hand-to-hand battle! Who forgets the great
muster-day, and the collision of the classic with the democratic forces?
The huge butcher, fifteen stone,--two hundred and ten pounds,--good
weight,--steps out like Telamonian Ajax, defiant. No words from Harry,
the Baltimorean,--one of the quiet sort, who strike first; and do the
talking, if there is any, afterwards. No words, but, in the place
thereof, a clean, straight, hard hit, which took effect with a spank like
the explosion of a percussion-cap, knocking the slayer of beeves down a
sand-bank,--followed, alas! by the too impetuous youth, so that both
rolled down together, and the conflict terminated in one of those
inglorious and inevitable Yankee clinches, followed by a general melee,
which make our native fistic encounters so different from such
admirably-ordered contests as that which I once saw at an English fair,
where everything was done decently and in order; and the fight began and
ended with such grave propriety, that a sporting parson need hardly have
hesitated to open it with a devout petition, and, after it was over,
dismiss the ring with a benediction.

I can't help telling one more story about this great field-day, though it
is the most wanton and irrelevant digression. But all of us have a
little speck of fight underneath our peace and good-will to men, just a
speck, for revolutions and great emergencies, you kn