Here some one shouted out, “Who is he, Wilkes? Where’s he going?”
“Well, now, I’ll be hanged if I know; but I’m willing to make any man a bet of this old hat agin a five-dollar bill, that that gent is as full of money as a dog is of fleas. He’s going down to Richmond to buy niggers, I make no doubt. He’s no fool, I warrant ye.”
“Well, he acts d——d strange,” said another, “anyhow. I likes to see a man, when he comes up to a tavern, to come straight into the bar-room, and show that he’s a man among men. Nobody was going to bite him.”
“Now, I don’t blame him a bit for not coming in here. That man knows his business, and means to take care on his money,” answered Wilkes.
“Wilkes, you’re a fool. You only say that, bekase you hope to get a few coppers out on him.”
“You only measure my corn by your half-bushel, I won’t say that you’re only mad becase I got the chance of speaking to him first.”
“O Wilkes! you’re known here. You’ll praise up any body that will give you a copper; besides, ’tis my opinion that that fellow who took his long slab-sides up stairs, for all the world just like a half-scared woman, afraid to look honest men in the face, is a _Northerner_, and as mean as dish-water.”
“Now what will you bet of that?” said Wilkes.
The speaker said, “I make no bets with you, ’kase you can get that fellow up stairs there to say anything.”
“Well,” said Wilkes, “I am willing to bet any man in the company that _that_ gentleman is a _nigger_-buyer. He didn’t tell me so right down, but I reckon I knows enough about men to give a pretty clean guess as to what they are arter.”
The dispute as to _who_ Mr. Listwell was, what his business, where he was going, &c., was kept up with much animation for some time, and more than once threatened a serious disturbance of the peace. Wilkes had his friends as well as his opponents. After this sharp debate, the company amused themselves by drinking whisky, and telling stories. The latter consisting of quarrels, fights, _rencontres_, and duels, in which distinguished persons of that neighbourhood, and frequenters of that house, had been actors. Some of these stories were frightful enough, and were told, too, with a relish which bespoke the pleasure of the parties with the horrid scenes they portrayed. It would not be proper here to give the reader any idea of the vulgarity and dark profanity which rolled, as “sweet morsel,” under these corrupt tongues. A more brutal set of creatures, perhaps, never congregated.