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variably have to grace their table, makes their playing look like the game in its most earnest phase.

But at the other end of the cabin, cards are played in a gay and more amusing manner. Our Yankee has been over with the ladies "whisting."

Their part of the cabin

is prohibited us, unless we pay five dollars extra, or travel with a lady. "He must needs be a bold rider that leaps the fence of custom." But once tell a Yankee of anything desirable, and his ingenuity will get it at the lowest possible figure.

The application of steam to locomotion, and the magnetic telegraph, appear to have supplied the latest wants of mankind up to this date. And though

"Man wants but little here below,

He'll not want that little long,"

if he only makes his need known to an ingenious Yankee, who is the only man now-a-days that believes in the Latin maxim, "Nil mortilibus arduum est,"-nothing is impossible for mortals. And in whatever enterprise he engages he bears

"That banner with the strange device"—

Eureka!

This is the Sabbath on the great "Father-of-waters." Could we catch sight of Father HENIPEN and his two companions, as they were dropping down the river in their frail canoe, we would hail the good old Jesuit and invite him on board to preach for us. A sermon, though JesuBut I think the won

itical, would be better than none. der excited by our steamer would rather frighten the old Father from a sermon into curiosity and amazement.

It appears that we have almost every other profession on

board to-day save that of the clergyman. The passengers seem to be conscious that it is the Sabbath, and show some slight change in their appearance. Even B. is more quiet; yet you can see that mirth and jollity are "pent up" in him, for he seems uneasy, and frequently in a low humming of some song, a whole line escapes audibly, by way of relief.

It has rained during the night, and continues this morning. The great canvass curtain has been let down about the fore-castle to keep the rain from beating in on the freight.

Arkansas is on our right, and Tennessee on our left. The landscape grows broader and more level, the shores lower and more monotonous. I have had a long talk with S. of Philadelphia, on Religion and Phrenology. He believes the latter and is sceptical on the former. He had better change—give his belief to Religion and his scepticism to Phrenology.

About four this morning we reached Memphis. Many of our passengers stop here. I shall miss some of them very much. A few days' acquaintance here has made it seem as if we had known each other for a year or more.

I arose and went out to the fore-castle; it was not daylight yet; nothing but a dim, obscure outline of buildings could be discerned. By endeavoring to find some form and comeliness to them, gazing in the dark, I found the effort hurt my eyes. We sailed away with such an impression of Memphis as the Daguerrean would get from his subject on smoked tin. The recollection of sailing along by these scenes and places in the night is like the faint remembrance one has of places he has visited in his dreams. Trees looked less nipped by the frost here.

Came to Helena, a "snatch" of a village, with a bad reputation, lying on the banks of the river, on the Arkan

sas side. We often meet men and boys in small boats and skiffs, darting by us across the stream.

We were much amused this noon, at table, by a stalworth Kentuckian. His uncombed hair, coarse boots, and brusque appearance, described him oddly among the rest. The waiter had given him beef steak as he directed, which he began to eat, but shortly desisted. He looked over to the rest, apparently to see how they got along with theirs. One could evidently see that he was in trouble-that he had either lost his appetite, or that there was a wrong somewhere. He tried his steak again, essayed to masticate it, stopped, threw down his knife and fork, looked up toward the waiter, who was some distance from him, and cried out, loud enough to startle the whole table: "Here, waiter, take this 'ere beef; it's tougher'n thunder! Give me something I can eat!"

A heavy fog rests on the river this morning, and hems in sight. Just as we arose from the breakfast table we were almost staggered from our feet. The steamer in the dense fog had run against the bank. She staggered back and reeled like a drunken sailor, then sheered off and went on again. We all rushed to the fore-castle, but the fog was there and nothing more. They tell us they had the first frost here last night, November 10th.

Here on the Mississippi side planters' houses appear in sight, sitting in a covert of green trees, with negro cabins neatly white-washed in rows near by them.

"Along the shores of the river

Shaded by China-trees, in the midst of luxuriant gardens,
Stood the houses of planters, with their negro cabins and

dove-cots."

The river is low, and even here we sound our way along. "Quarter less twain!" cries the man with the line below. "Quarter less twain!" echoes some one on the hurricane

deck to the pilot at the wheel. "Quarter more twain !" &c., &c., all cried out to the pilot who steers the boat accordingly.

But we "caught a Tartar" last night. He has made more stir and noise since he came on board than we have had in the whole trip before. He is a rattling, garrulous talker on politics, or any other subject. He is among us like "the boy that puts the chip on the shoulder," then urges some one to knock it off, which leads to contention and blows. I fear some of us will part in a quarrel. · About noon Vicksburgh appeared in sight, ten miles off, resting on a hill-side. But we have lost sight of it in going round this bend. There it is again! lying like a thing of romantic beauty on the side of hills that slope to the river. "From the foot of this irregular side of the summit, the dwellings are scattered in the most picturesque manner. Upon every green knoll, rise of ground or accessible cliff, you see cottages of every style and form, seated in nests of flowers and evergreens. The streets, some of them terraces in the hill-side, are parallel with the river, and rise one above the other, so that the galleries of the houses on one often project over the tops of those on the other." The principal business streets have many fine, commodious blocks of brick and stone. They were not crowded, but had the quiet, composed air of the city mart. The levee is not paved, but covered, to-day, with goods, swarms of carts and drays, and moving things. It is truly a walk up-hill to get into the city.

ces.

Beyond the business streets we came to those of residenHere the air was "balm and rosemary;" the gardens were radiant with flowers, and green with perennial shrubs and trees. The arbor vitæ shot up, trimmed in the shape of a cone; the orange myrtle fashioned in the shape of a huge pine-apple, and others trimmed in various other

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shapes, stood, with their smooth, symmetrical tops, here and there, amid those of nature's untrimmed, luxuriant growth, with their boughs loosed in the wind. Seated amid these were the residences. And hid in a covert of them were those "bird nests"-bowers and summer-houses, clambered over, scented and thatched by the jessamine and woodbine.

Which of these, thought I, is "Club Castle," once the home of S. S. PRENTISS, that brilliant star that shot from the Northern into the Southern hemisphere, dazzling all eyes till it set in its noon-day splendor. They told me many interesting stories about him here. How suddenly he acquired fame among them. The sunshine shed upon their law by his transcendent genius; the wizard power and brilliancy of his cloquence. While he resided in this city, he was in the flower of his forensic fame-in the full freshness of his unmatched faculties.

Finding here an old resident of Michigan, I went with him to a private boarding-house. On paying my bill the next morning, I found, as I often had before on my trip, that

"Thereby hung a tale."

Fifty cents more! But I had got over the apex of exorbitant charges when the barber on the steamboat charged me forty cents for shaving my upper lip. Thinking that he undoubtedly regarded me as some eastern prince, I paid him without a murmur.

At noon I took the trig, excellent little "Packet Steamer, Home," that runs between Vicksburgh and Yazoo City, on the Yazoo river, for Satartia. Leaving the turbid Mississippi, with a current of a mile in width, for this gentle stream of only thirty rods' breadth, was an agreeable change. Its banks are willow-skirted, and the trees in

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