to pieces. She wonders they do not recognize her as a distinguished
person, from the chivalric State of South Carolina. The captain is
engaged with his ship, passengers are hurrying ashore, too anxious
to escape the confinement of the cabin; every one seems in haste to
leave her, no one offers to protect her from the clutches of those
who threaten to tear her into precious pieces. She sighs for Sister
Slocum, for Mr. Hadger, for any one kind enough to raise a friendly
voice in her behalf. Now one has got her black box, another her
corpulent carpet-bag-a third exults in a victory over her band-box.
Fain would she give up her mission in disgust, return to the more
aristocratic atmosphere of Charleston, and leave the heathen to his
fate. All this might have been avoided had Sister Slocum sent her
carriage. She will stick by her black box, nevertheless. So into the
carriage with it she gets, much discomfited. The driver says he
would drive to the Mayor's office "and 'ave them ar two coves what's
got the corpulent carpet-bag and the band-box, seed after, if it
wern't that His Honor never knows anything he ought to know, and is
sure to do nothing. They'll turn up, Mam, I don't doubt," says the
man, "but it's next to los'in' on 'em, to go to the Mayor's office.
Our whole corporation, Mam, don't do nothin' but eats oysters,
drinks whiskey, and makes presidents;--them's what they do, Marm."
Lady Swiggs says what a pity so great a city was not blessed with a
bigger-headed corporation.

"That it is, Marm," returns the methodical hack-driver, "he an't got
a very big head, our corporation." And Lady Swiggs, deprived of her
carpet-bag and band-box, and considerably out of patience, is rolled
away to the mansion of Sister Slocum, on Fourth Avenue. Instead of
falling immediately into the arms and affections of that worthy and
very enterprising lady, the door is opened by a slatternly maid of