and their tastes; and so he was bitter against reformers, who
interfered with the gaieties of the city, with no consideration for
the tastes of "buyers." But then, on the other hand, would come a
time of renunciation, when he would be all enthusiasm for
temperance.

He was full of old-fashioned ideas, which would take the quaintest
turns of reactionism; his politics were summed up in the phrase that
he "would rather vote for a nigger than a Republican"; but then, in
the same breath, he would announce some fine and noble sentiment,
out of the traditions of a forgotten past. He was the soul of
courtesy to women, and of loyalty to friends. He worshipped General
Lee and the old time "Virginia gentleman"; and those with whom he
lived, and for whose unclean profits he sold himself, never guessed
the depths of his contempt for all they stood for. They had the
dollars, they were on top; but some day the nemesis of Good-breeding
would smite them--the army of the ghosts of Gentility would rise,
and with "Marse Robert" and "Jeb" Stuart at their head, would sweep
away the hordes of commercialdom.

Thyrsis saw a great deal of this forgotten chivalry. His nursery had
been haunted by such musty phantoms; and when he first came to the
Northern city, he stayed at a hotel which was frequented by people
who lived in this past--old ladies who were proud and prim, and old
gentlemen who were quixotic and humorous, young ladies who were
"belles," and young gentlemen who aspired to be "blades". It was a
world that would have made happy the soul of any writer of romances;
but to Thyrsis in earliest childhood the fates had given the gift of
seeing beneath the shams of things, and to him this dead Aristocracy
cried out loudly for burial. There was an incredible amount of