Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/335

 destined for the south-western market. This was the last trace Thad of them. To Augusta, therefore, I now directed my course, not, however, without the most depressing feelings, and a painful consciousness that when I reached that place, I should be without the slightest clew to guide me any farther.

I left Charleston in the stage coach for Augusta, long before daylight. As the day began to dawn, I found myself one of four passengers. At first we were pretty silent, each trying to sleep in his corner, or else eyeing his fellow-passengers, as if wishing to ascertain their character before making any advances towards acquaintance. At breakfast we began to thaw out a little, and by dinner time we were quite sociable.

It presently appeared that two of the passengers were northern men; one of them the editor of a New York newspaper, the other a Boston agent, employed in the purchase of cotton for some mercantile houses or manufacturing companies of that city. The third passenger was a person of very striking appearance, with a face of great intelligence, a dark eye that seemed to penetrate you at a glance, a captivating smile, manners exceedingly soft and winning, and something in his whole bearing that indicated a man accustomed to mingle freely in society.

He was evidently taken by the other two for a wealthy planter, and he neither did nor said any thing to contradict the assumption, receiving with an air of gracious condescension the court which they paid to him.

After a variety of topics, the conversation, as is common in America, settled down upon politics, and especially upon the nomination lately made for president and vice-president by a convention of the democratic or Jackson party assembled at Baltimore. Mr Van Buren, the nominee of that convention for the presidency, was very sharply criticized by the two northern men, on the ground, principally, that in a