n making its
accustomed rounds was on the twenty-sixth of October, 1850. On that day,
a very remarkable event occurred, which attracted the notice of
passers-by and was even snatched up as an item by the ever-vigilant
reporters of the daily press; this consisted simply in a notable
variation from the routine and habits of the old gentleman in the
long-tailed blue. He was seen to stop on Canal street, to hesitate for a
few moments, and then deliberately enter an omnibus bound for the lower
part of the city. Such an occurrence created quite a sensation among
street-corner gossippers. There must really be some new and pressing
emergency, which could produce this departure from the custom and
invariable habits of forty years; so said every one who knew the old
gentleman. The omnibus stopped at the court-house; the subject of these
observations and his blue umbrella emerged from it, and both soon
disappeared in the corridor leading to the so-called halls of justice.

That was the last that was ever seen of the strange old gentleman on the
streets of New-Orleans. The evening journals of the next day contained
the following obituary:

'Died this morning, the twenty-seventh of October, 1850, at
McDonoghville, opposite the city of New-Orleans, after a short
illness, John McDonogh, a native of Baltimore, but for forty years
a resident of Louisiana.'

And the strange old man, who could not ride a few squares in the omnibus
without attracting the attention of every body and exciting public
curiosity to such a degree, was the millionaire, the Croesus of the
South, the largest land-owner in the United States. He had reached the
advanced age of seventy, and his remarkable vigor and health had never
given way under the pressure of the severest and most incessant labor.
Generation upon generation had lapsed into the grave under his eye. A
few, a very few shriveled old men were known to him as cotemporaries.
Suddenly, while pursuing so eagerly his imaginary goal, he was seized
with faintness on the street. Other men would have taken a cab, and
ridden home, or at least to a physician's; but when did John McDonogh
turn aside from business to relieve any weakness or want? He had an
important document to file in court. It must be done that day. He is too
weak to walk. There is the omnibus; the fare is only a dime; but that
dime is so much taken from the poor, for John McDonogh is only an agent
for the poor, so appointe