hands as any other than a rebel and mutineer. Whether he came from the North or the South mattered little if he were black; the colour was the dividing line, not the individual nor his antecedents. Fort Pillow, garrisoned partly by black, partly by white troops, was attacked by General Forrest, who soon reduced it to submission. Various accounts are given of what took place after the surrender, but one thing is certain, many negroes were shot down and bayonetted, after their flag was lowered, and when they were, in all respects, entitled to the privileges of prisoners of war. It is even said that some were tortured and burnt alive, their charred remains being afterwards discovered nailed to the floors of wooden shanties which had been burnt over them.

CHAPTER XXII.

AMERICAN FORTUNES.

HE feasibility of making vast fortunes in America would seem to be a gene

rally received idea in Europe. Nevertheless, very large fortunes are rarely made there, still more rarely are they taken out of the country, and they are hardly ever bequeathed. In spite of the knowledge that a dollar is in gold, only a fifth part of a pound, and in "greenbacks"-the present currency-only a seventh, yet people who would scarcely notice “twenty thousand pounds," are more or less carried away by the sound of a "hundred thousand" dollars. The hundred thousands of dollars, however, are neither frequent, nor to be made in a hurryby Europeans especially. The large fortunes made in America cannot be compared, either in amount or rapidity of acquisition, with those of Europe. The great millionaire of New York has been a slave to money-making for thirty or

forty years; others have made their fortunes by accident from sudden rises in the value of land -and Mr. Peabody's was made in England.

A certain class of people, possessing no fortune in Europe, and no probability of ever making one-such as small farmers, labourers, artisans of every kind, small shopkeepers, hucksters, and all women who can turn their hands to manual labour-either as sewers, housemaids, cooks, and cleaners, also labourers' wives—may do well in America, and, by steadiness and industry, earn a competency, or even acquire a small fortune. A woman who can keep house, and can work herself at cooking, preserving, upholstering, etc., is the one most calculated to make money.

Men who have sufficient energy and strength to go out into the woods, build their own loghouse, and live upon what chance throws in their way for a year or two, are certain, eventually, to do well, and make money. They will never become Rothschilds, or Thorntons, but they will be richer men than they would ever have been in the old country. Small shopkeepers, accustomed to chaffering, may, from a very small beginning on pins, buttons, rock candies, and reels of cotton, scrape together a very respectable competency. They can soon begin to wear broad-cloth and silk dresses, to board at the most frequented hotels, and be

considered ladies and gentlemen-—an elevation in the social scale they could never have even contemplated in Europe. They can send their children to school with the best, having very frequently not to pay for it; and if a man is dissatisfied with the station he occupies in the world, there is no place like America for changing it. This, however, cuts both ways. For if a man of refinement and high breeding should fancy that with these qualifications, as well as his education and intellect, he, too, may make a fortune, he will find himself grievously mistaken, and probably in the course of a few years he will have sunk to the level of one who, in Europe, would have been his footman or his ploughboy.

Manual, not mental labour, is at the highest premium in America. And where a man who is master of some useful handicraft could earn a handsome subsistence, one possessed only of intellectual acquirements would speedily be reduced to starvation. Though newspapers and periodicals are numerous, and probably the editorial staff of each very large, yet it can scarcely be said that the press offers a field for literary talent that it needs is merely a capacity for gathering and putting together odds and ends. of very mediocre quality-common jokes, directions for gardening, and recipes for cookery,

with the sayings and doings of prominent persons, living or dead; some scraps of commercial intelligence, telegraphic news, two or three columns of arrivals and departures of steamers, with a full inventory of cargoes and consignees. Now and then fulsome eulogiums of the defunct, more frequently scurrilous vituperations of the living, murders, and atrocities of all kinds— described in language that would not be tolerated in the lowest English publication—and but very few leading articles of any literary merit. Whether it is that the people do not require it, or that proprietors will not make the outlay necessary for engaging men of talent, I do not know; but as they can sell papers written in this rough inferior style for ten cents each, and could not, in all probability, get twelve, even if replete with talent and learning, we can come to no other conclusion than that this low standard satisfies the public taste.

As many of the papers daily fill several columns with "blood-and-thunder" stories of a kind similar to those of the "London Journal," a great many penny-a-liners are employed, and no doubt still more could be engaged on such trashy literature, whilst for a really talented person of superior education and acquirements no occupation could be found. On the other hand, living in America is so very expensive, that

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