47
                     Antecedents -
professed to have lain with her, telling anec-
dotes of her peculiar temperament. (These I
heard some weeks subsequent to the date under
which I write; during my sojourn at Port
Royal.)  He was a fair haired Irishman
with rather a square face, a decidedly aquiline
nose, a moustache, and a not altogether pre-
possessing look.  Born in Ireland, he had
gone enthusiastically into the Mitchel and
O�Brien rebellion, though I don�t know that
he was obliged to flee his country in conse-
quence.  He told me a good deal, curious in
its way, about the equivocal �patriots� of that
epoch, its poets and others.  He proved, in-
deed, very friendly to me, in South Caroli-
na.  By the way his last political experience
ws at the Charleston Convention, to which
he went in the Douglas interest.  Now, he
had assumed a final e to his name and was
factotum to Gen. Hunter of which more
anon.  Halpin, or Halpine, an ex-newspa-
per man himself, was very civil to the rep-
resentatives of the press generally, and demo-
cratically politic in propitiating them.  He
had a wife and children in New York or Wash-
ington.  He was destined, a couple of years
after this date, to attain considerable celebrity