the Collector of Customs
at a sea-port town in Florida, United States. The climate there is
perpetual summer; it never rains, nor anything; and there was no good
reason why the Colonel should not have enjoyed it to the top of his
bent, as there was enough for all. In point of fact, the Collectorship
had been given him solely that he might repair his wasted vitality by
a short season of unbroken repose; for during the Presidential canvass
immediately preceding his appointment he had been kept awake a long
time by means of strong tea, in order to deliver an able and
exhaustive political argument prepared by the candidate, who was
ultimately successful in spite of it. Halsey, who had favoured the
other aspirant, was a merchant, and had nothing in the world to do but
annoy the collector. If the latter could have kept away from him, the
dignity of the office might have been preserved, and the object of the
incumbent's appointment to it attained; but sneak away whithersoever
he might--into the heart of the dismal swamp, or anywhere in the
Everglades--some vagrom Indian or casual negro was sure to stumble
over him before long, and go and tell Halsey, securing a plug of
tobacco for reward. Or if he was not found in this way, some company
was tolerably certain, in the course of time, to survey a line of
railway athwart his leafy couch, and laying his prostrate trunk aside
out of the way, send word to his persecutor; who, as soon as the line
was as nearly completed as it ever would be, would come down on
horseback with some diabolical device for waking the slumberer. I will
confess there is a subtle seeming of unlikelihood about all this; but
in the land where Ponce de Leon searched for the Fountain of Youth
there is an air of unreality in everything. I can only say I have had
the story by me a long time, and it seems to me just as true as it was
the day I wrote it.

Sometimes the Colonel would seek out a hillside with a southern
exposure; but no sooner would he compose his members for a bit of
slumber, than Halsey would set about making inquiries for him, under
pretence that a ship was _en route_ from Liverpool, and the
collector's signature might be required for her anchoring papers.
Having traced him--which, owing to the meddlesome treachery of the
venal natives, he was always able to do--Halsey would set off to Texas
for a seed of the prickly pear, which he would plant exactly beneath
the slumberer's body. This he called a t