boy, sat far down over his ears, like some shabby
bird of night just stooping to carry off two oysters; a curious
antiquity in the shape of a black stock loomed gloomily under his chin,
as a memorial sepulchre in which some departed collar was supposed to
be sacredly entombed; his face was toward Kentucky, and in his hands he
was vivaciously shuffling a number of cards.

"Hum, hem!" soliloquized the Conservative Kentucky chap,
complacently--"ten of spades--king of diamonds--king of hearts--ace of
clubs--ace of hearts--ace of"--

Here the Conservative Kentucky chap uttered an absolutely startling
cough and, at the same instant, passed three of the aces up his left
sleeve!

"Yes," said the Conservative Kentucky chap, still to himself, "the
pasteboards are all right--hem!--it's your deal. Ah! ten is it?--I'll
go twenty better--forty--sixty! Hem! Ace and two Kings is it? Look
here--three aces! Good-night, gents."--and the Conservative Kentucky
chap at once sang, with triumphant and great effect:

"Four years the war have looked upon,
But haven't brought the end meant;
Nor anything except the Constitutional Amendment;
Oh, Kentucky! an't this a go, Kentucky?
Oh, Kentucky! an awful blow, Kentucky!"

As the last note of exquisite melody died away upon the air, I slapped
him on the shoulder, and says I:

"Well done, my son of Hoyle!"

The Conservative Kentucky chap sprang wildly to his feet, my boy,
simultaneously "making a pass" of the cards into his pocket, and
commenced dancing insanely before me with a view of hiding from my
notice the four of clubs, which he had dropped to the ground and was
anxious to conceal in the mud.

"Ha! ha!" observed the Conservative Kentucky chap, somewhat
hysterically, in the midst of his dance; "of course you didn't see what
I was doing?"

Then it was, my boy, that I folded my arms after the manner of Hamlet,
threw forward my right knee, shook my head profoundly thrice, and
murmured, with the poet:

"Were his old mother near him now, how would that mother grieve,
To see two aces in his hand,--another up his sleeve."

"My mother!" exclaimed the Conservative Kentucky chap, suddenly
descending into Cimmerian gloom; "Kentucky is my mother, and from her
maternal fount I drew the old rye of my existence. But now, Kentucky
becomes a indigent pauper under the Constitutional Amendment and the
failure of the Bankrupt Bill, and I find myself compelled to