The traitor's plot.
A correspondent of the Evening Post tells the following anecdote:--Three months ago I was returning from Washington, when Colonel Taylor, (brother of the late President Taylor,) who is now in the federal army, being on a visit to Newark, N. J., joined our party. Colonel Jeff. Davis, as is well known, ran away with General Taylor's daughter, and the families were intimate. Colonel Taylor had but a short time before held an after-dinner's conversation with Jefferson Davis, and while lamenting the approaching troubles, gave us an account of that conversation. The words of Colonel Taylor were nearly as follows:After a free talk about our country's troubles, we sat still smoking for some time, when I said, ‘Colonel, what a bad way we are in.’ ‘Oh! yes, yes,’ replied Davis, with comparative indifference. Thinking to touch his pride a little, I said, ‘ Colonel, what a fine chance for a southern man to distinguish himself by uniting the North and South! ’ ‘We shall see, we shall see,’ was Davis's answer, and he went on smoking. By-and-by, wishing more to draw him out, I said, ‘Well, you are a southerner, and an ambitious, talented, reckless fellow; why don't you bring this about, and make the North and South shake hands? You will immortalize yourself by doing that, as Washington did by founding his country.’ Davis replied, taking the cigar from his mouth, ‘You are at one end of the rope, colonel, and we are at the other; let us see which of us can pull the longest and the strongest.’
