ering-
in and Disbursing Officer."

Joseph R. Paxton was a very intimate friend of mine in Philadelphia. He
was still a young man, and one of the most remarkable whom I have ever
known. He was a great scholar. He was more familiar with all the
_rariora_, _curiosa_, and singular marvels of literature than any body I
ever knew except Octave Delepierre, with whose works he first made me
acquainted. He had translated Ik Marvel's "Reveries of a Bachelor" into
French, and had been accepted by a Paris publisher. He had been a
lawyer, an agent for a railroad, and had long edited in Philadelphia a
curious journal entitled _Bizarre_, and written a work on gems. His
whole soul, however, was in the French literature of the eighteenth
century, and he always had a library which would make a collector's mouth
water. Had he lived in London or Paris, he would have made a great
reputation. And he was kind-hearted, genial, and generous to a fault. He
had always some unfortunate friend living on him, some Bohemian of
literature under a cloud.

I entered the office and found him, and great was his amazement! "_Que
diable_, _mon ami_, _faistu ici dans cette galere_?" was his greeting. I
explained the circumstances in detail. He at once exclaimed, "Come and
live here with me. General Whipple is my brother-in-law, and he will be
here in a few days and live with us. He'll make it all right." "Here,
Jim!" he cried to a great six-foot man of colour--"run round to the hotel
and bring this gentleman's luggage!"

There I remained for a very eventful month. Paxton had entered with the
conquerors, and had just seized on the house. I may indeed say that _we_
seized on it, as regards any right--I being accepted as hail-fellow-well-
met, and as a bird of the same feather. In it was a piano and a very
good old-fashioned library. It was like Paxton to loot a library. He
had had his pick of the best houses, and took this one, "niggers
included," for the servants, by some odd freak, preferred freedom with
Paxton to slavery with their late owner. This gentleman was a Methodist
clergyman, and Paxton found among his papers proofs that he had been
concerned in a plot to burn Cincinnati by means of a gang of secret
incendiaries.

Whenever the blacks realised the fact that a Northern man was a
_gentleman_--they all have marvellous instincts for this, and a respect
for one beyond belief--they took to him with a love like that of bees for
a