was a pause, and Judge Reed, stepping forward amid a breathless silence,
said that they were peculiarly honored by the unexpected presence in
their midst "of that famous son of the South, Colonel Starbottle,"
who had lately returned to his native soil from his adopted home in
California. Every eye was fixed on the distinguished stranger as he
rose.

Jaunty and gallant as ever, femininely smooth-faced, yet polished and
high colored as a youthful mask; pectorally expansive, and unfolding the
white petals of his waistcoat through the swollen lapels of his coat,
like a bursting magnolia bud, Colonel Starbottle began. The present
associations were, he might say, singularly hallowed to him; not only
was Pineville--a Southern centre--the recognized nursery of Southern
chivalry, Southern beauty (a stately inclination to the pew in which
Miss Sally and Julia Jeffcourt sat), Southern intelligence, and Southern
independence, but it was the home of the lamented dead who had been,
like himself and another he should refer to later, an adopted citizen of
the Golden State, a seeker of the Golden Fleece, a companion of Jason.
It was the home, fellow-citizens and friends, of the sorrowing sister of
the deceased, a young lady whom he, the speaker, had as yet known only
through the chivalrous blazon of her virtues and graces by her attendant
knights (a courteous wave towards the gallery where Joyce Masterton,
Chester Brooks, Calhoun Bungstarter, and the embattled youth generally
of Pineville became empurpled and idiotic); it was the home of the
afflicted widowed mother, also personally unknown to him, but with whom
he might say he had had--er--er--professional correspondence. But it
was not this alone that hallowed the occasion, it was a sentiment that
should speak in trumpet-like tones throughout the South in this uprising
of an united section. It was the forgetfulness of petty strife, of
family feud, of personal wrongs in the claims of party! It might not be