sir, on the true reason of the revolt of the slave States in America?"

The cosmopolitan, by this time standing, turned to me with a courteous
motion of acquiescence; and, after having given me to understand by an
agreeable smile that he did not confound me with his pair of victims,
he said pompously, "The true cause was that each Northern freeholder
demanded the use of two planters, now mostly octoroons, for
body-servants."

"You don't say so?" said the school-teacher, profoundly impressed.

The Scotchman looked like him who digesteth a pill. I decided quickly
on my own rôle, and briskly joined the conversation. Fishing up my
botany-box and extracting the little flower, "Nothing is more likely
when you know the country," I observed. "I have lived in Florida,
gentlemen, where I undertook, as Comparative Geographer and as amateur
botanist" (I looked searchingly at the professor, who had called me
an herb-doctor), "to fix the location of Ponce de Leon's fountain and
observe the medicinal plants to which it owes its virtue. America,
I must explain to you, is a country where proportions are greatly
changed. The pineapple tree there grows so very tall that it is
impossible from the ground to reach the fruit. This little flower now
in my hand becomes in that climate a towering and sturdy plant, the
tobacco plant. The wild justice of those lawless savannahs uses it as
a gibbet for the execution of criminals, whence the term 'Lynchburg
tobacco.' You cannot readily imagine the scale on which life expands.
It was formerly not necessary to be a great man there to have a
hundred slaves. For my part, sixty domestics sufficed me" (I regarded
sternly the homoeopathist, who had taken me for a waiter): "it was but
a scant allowance, since my pipe alone took the whole time of four."