156
	Colonel Billy Wilson.
pagne and sherry, the latter muddy.   Both
Duyckman and Turner at the top and bottom of
the table, showed very hearty and hospitably.  The
latter, with a very red face looked rather like Led-
ger, only not so ugly.         Dinner over, Cahill
and I went to visit �Colonel� Wilson and his
�Zouaves,� beyond the Quarantine grounds.  Some
were marching, pannikin in hand, I suppose to
fetch coffee or water, across a fine sloping pre
green, at the further end of which we found
a banner with �Death to Secessionists� inscribed
upon it, before the barrack of the redoubtable
�Billy.�  He was within, seated at a rough table,
with some official-looking books on it, a group
of �officers� and visitors near him, more seated
on benches surrounding the barn-like interior.
The ex-pugilist, ex-alderman of New York (who
once bit a man�s nose off in a fight and, if I
am not mistaken, obtained a day�s notoriety by
beating a prostitute in a brothel) received us
with the civility always accorded on this side of
the Atlantic to �gentlemen of the press.�   He was
short in stature, had a countenance that might
have been accepted as a type of the New York
ruffian, hard, coarse and latently cruel,
the nostrils being unpleasantly perceptible.  This