of runt college; and the teacher vainly endeavored to hide the meanness of the calling beneath the sonorous sobriquet of Professor. . . .
I had a friend on whom this catastrophe descended. Tom Edmundson was buck of the first head—gay, witty, dashing, vain, proud, handsome, and volatile, and, withal, a dandy and lady's man to the last intent in particular. He had graduated at the University, and had just settled with his guardian, and received his patrimony of ten thousand dollars in money. Being a young gentleman of enterprise, he sought the alluring fields of Southwestern adventure, and found them in this state. Before he well knew the condition of his exchequer, he had made a permanent investment of one half of his fortune in cigars, champagne, trinkets, buggies, horses, and current expenses, including some small losses at poker, which game he patronized merely for amusement; and found that it diverted him a good deal, but diverted his cash much more. He invested the balance, on private information kindly given him, in "Choctaw Floats," a most lucrative investment it would have turned out but for the facts: 1. That the Indians never had any title; 2. The white man who kindly interposed to act as guardian for the Indians did not have the Indian title; 3. The land, left subject to entry if the "Floats" had been good, was not worth entering. "These imperfections off its head," I know of no fancy stock I would prefer to a "Choctaw Float." " Brief, brave, and glorious" was "Tom's young career." When Thomas found, as he did shortly, that he had bought five thousand dollars worth of moonshine and had no title to it, he honestly informed his landlord of the state of his "fiscality," and that worthy kindly consented to take a new buggy, at half price, in payment of the old balance. The horse, a nick-tailed trotter, Tom had raffled off, but omitting to require cash, the process of collection resulted in his getting the price of one
