to issue from among them. But the fate of the
more dignified personages, who are left in the other room, is extremely
dismal. The gentlemen spit, talk of elections and the price of produce,
and spit again. The ladies look at each other's dresses till they know
every pin by heart; talk of Parson Somebody's last sermon on the day of
judgment, or Dr. T'otherbody's new pills for dyspepsia, till the 'tea' is
announced, when they all console themselves together for whatever they may
have suffered in keeping awake, by taking more tea, coffee, hot cake and
custard, hoe cake, johny cake, waffle cake, and dodger cake, pickled
peaches, and preserved cucumbers, ham, turkey, hung beef, apple sauce, and
pickled oysters, than ever were prepared in any other country of the known
world. After this massive meal is over, they return to the drawing-room,
and it always appeared to me that they remained together as long as they
could bear it, and then they rise _en masse_--cloak, bonnet, shawl, and
exit."

_Conversation of an American Woman._

"'Well now, so you be from the old country? Ay--you'll see sights here I
guess.' 'I hope I shall see many.' 'That's a fact.--Why they do say,
that if a poor body contrives to be smart enough to scrape together a few
dollars, that your King George always comes down upon 'em, and takes it
all away. Don't he?' 'I do not remember hearing of such a transaction.' 'I
guess they be pretty close about it.' 'Your papers ben't like ourn, I
reckon? Now we says and prints just what we likes.' 'You spend a good deal
of time in reading the newspapers.' 'And I'd like you to tell me how we
can spend it better. How should freemen spend their time, but looking
after their government, and watching that them fellers as we gives offices
to, doos their duty, and gives themselves no airs?' 'But I sometimes think,
sir, that your fences might be in more thorough repair, and your roads in
better order, if less time was spent in politics.' 'The Lord! to see how
little you knows of a free country? Why, what's the smoothness of a road
put against the freedom of a free-born American? And what does a broken
zig-zag signify, comparable to knowing that the men what we have been
pleased to send up to Congress, speaks handsome and straight, as we
chooses they should?' 'It is from a sense of duty, then, that you all go
to the liquor store to read the papers?' 'To be sure it is, and he'd be no
true-born American as didn't. I don't say tha