and even among amateurs he would have been accounted the softest of soft
things. His prayer was answered, she did recover, and he proceeded to
fulfill his vow.

But what was he to do? He had been taught, or at least he had learned,
to do nothing, not even to play poker! I suggested that as running a
restaurant was a French prerogative and that as he knew less about cooking
than about anything else--we had had a contest or two over the mysteries of
a pair of chafing dishes--and as there was not a really good eating place
in Louisville, he should set up a restaurant. It was said rather in jest
than in earnest; but I was prepared to lend him the money. The next thing I
knew, and without asking for a dollar, he had opened The Brunswick.

In those days I saw the Courier-Journal to press, turning night into day,
and during a dozen years I took my twelve o'clock supper there. It was thus
and from these beginnings that the casual acquaintance between us ripened
into intimacy, and that I gradually came into a knowledge of the reserves
behind The Major's buoyant optimism and occasional gasconnade.

He ate and drank sparingly; but he was not proof against the seduction
of good company, and he had plenty of it, from William Preston to Joseph
Jefferson, with such side lights as Stoddard Johnston, Boyd Winchester,
Isaac Caldwell and Proctor Knott, of the Home Guard--very nearly all the
celebrities of the day among the outsiders--myself the humble witness
and chronicler. He secured an excellent chef, and of course we lived
exceedingly well.

The Major's most obvious peculiarity was that he knew everything and had
been everywhere. If pirates were mentioned he flowered out at once into an
adventure upon the sea; if bandits, on the land. If it was Wall Street