By agreement of all parties, this batture was surveyed into squares and lots, and sold at public auction, and the money deposited in the Bank of Louisiana, to the credit of the Supreme Court of the United States, to abide the decision of that tribunal as to the rightful ownership.  The decision gave it to the city.  Grymes, as attorney for the city, by order of the court, received a check for the money.  The bank paid the check, and Grymes appropriated one hundred thousand dollars of it, as a fee for his services, and then deposited the balance to the credit of the mayor and council of the city.  This was a large fee, but was not really what he was entitled to, under the custom of chancery for collecting money.  He had agreed to pay Daniel Webster for assistance rendered; but Mr. Webster, some years after, informed me that he had never received a cent, and I am sure he never did, after that.

Grymes was well aware, if the city fathers got their hands upon the money, it would be years before he got this amount, if ever.  With a portion of this money he liquidated all claims not antiquated and forgotten by him, and the balance was intrusted to the hands of a friend to invest for his benefit.  This, together with his practice, which was now declining, furnished a handsome support for him.  Age appeared to effect little change in his personnel.  At sixty-seven, he was as erect in person and as elastic in step as at thirty.  There was none of that embonpoint usually the consequence of years and luxurious living.  He was neither slender nor fat; but what is most agreeable to the eye—­between the two, with a most perfectly formed person.  His features were manly, and strikingly beautiful; his blue eyes beaming with the hauteur of high breeding and ripe intelligence.  These features were too often disfigured with the sneer of scorn, or the curled lip of expressive contempt.  His early hopes, his manhood’s ambition had been disappointed; and, soured and sore, he sneered at the world, and despised it.  He had no confidence in man or woman, and had truly reached Hamlet’s condition, when “Man delighted him not, nor woman either.”  He felt the world was his debtor, and was niggardly in its payments.  He grew more and more morose as the things of time receded.  Others, full of youth, talent, and vigor, were usurping the positions and enjoying the honors of life, which were slipping away from him unenjoyed.  He turned upon these the bitterness engendered by disappointment.  Cynicism lent edge to his wit, and bitterness to his sarcasm.  He was at war with himself, and consequently with all the world.  His mind felt none of the imbecility of age, and to the last retained its perspicuity and power.  As he came into life a man, and never knew a boyhood, so he went from it a man, without the date of years.  At sixty-eight years of age, he went quietly from life without suffering, and, to himself, without regret.  He was a man—­take him all in all—­whose like we shall not look on soon again.