hat up-country
cotton, which Kirby Smith had above the Big Raft. I had the printers
ready for near a month waiting for that paper. The plates were really
very handsome. I'll show you a proof when we go up stairs. Wholly new
they were, made by some Frenchmen we got, who had worked for the Bank of
France. I was so anxious to have the thing well done, that I waited
three weeks for that paper, and, by Jove, I waited just too long. We
never got one of the bonds off, and that was why we had no money in
March."

Richards threw his cigar away. I will not say he swore between his
teeth, but he twirled his chair round, brought it down on all fours,
both his elbows on his knees and his chin in both hands.

"Mr. Sisson," said he, "if the Confederacy had lived, I would have died
before I ever told what became of that order of yours. But now I have no
secrets, I believe, and I care for nothing. I do not know now how it
happened. We knew it was an extra nice job. And we had it on an elegant
little new French Fourdrinier, which cost us more than we shall ever
pay. The pretty thing ran like oil the day before. That day, I thought
all the devils were in it. The more power we put on the more the rollers
screamed; and the less we put on, the more sulkily the jade stopped. I
tried it myself every way; back current, I tried; forward current; high
feed; low freed, I tried it on old stock, I tried it on new; and, Mr.
Sisson, I would have made better paper in a coffee-mill! We drained off
every drop of water. We washed the tubs free from size. Then my brother,
there, worked all night with the machinists, taking down the frame and
the rollers. You would not believe it, sir, but that little bit of
wire,"--and he took out of his pocket a piece of this hateful steel,
which poor I knew so well by this time,--"that little bit of wire had
passed in from some hoop-skirt, passed the pickers, passed the screens,
through all the troughs, up and down through what we call the
lacerators, and had got itself wrought in, where, if you know a
Fourdrinier machine, you may have noticed a brass ring riveted to the
cross-bar, and there this cursed little knife--for you see it was a
knife, by that time--had been cutting to pieces the endless wire web
every time the machine was started. You lost your bonds, Mr. Sisson,
because some Yankee woman cheated one of my rag-men."

On that story I came up stairs. Poor Aunt Eunice! She was the reason I
got no salary on the