mutton chop, eggs, cheese, butter, honey, hot cakes; a
pile of pilot-bread-toast a foot high, ditto untoasted, coffee, tea, and
chocolate. To all this good cheer, their fashionable visiter paid but
small respect, and the old commander, having pressed him to make himself
at home, and help himself, attacked his own breakfast with vigor,
feeling at the same time no small contempt for a man whose stomach could
be so effectually unhinged by a simple capsize, and thorough ducking.
The vender of tape and calico, seemed to feast his eyes, if not his
appetite, by gazing on the lovely countenance of his young hostess; and
after some slight hesitation, commenced talking to her of theatres, and
balls, and assemblies, and fashionable intelligence in general; but
Balaam's ass, if she had marched into the room and commenced an oration
in the original Hebrew, or Chaldee, or Syro-Phoenician, or whatever
might have been _its_ vernacular tongue in which she formerly addressed
her master, could not have been more unintelligible. The old gentleman
made an attempt to drive a conversation, and asked a few questions
relative to foreign politics, the state of navigation, and commerce, in
New York, &c.; but finding his auditor as ignorant as though he had
proposed a case in middle latitude sailing, he dropped him altogether.

He remained in the family three or four days, during which, his
attentions to Mary were incessant, but managed with such fashionable
tact as not to be annoying. She was exceedingly amused by his consummate
vanity and self-conceit; that seemed to make up the greater part of his
character. His descriptions of society and manners in the commercial
emporium, though not altogether intelligible to his fair auditor, were
new and amusing, and in spite of the contagious effect of her father's
contempt, and the troubled looks of poor Kelson, she could not help
listening to him with complacency. It was evident to every body but Mary
that the retailer of ginghams was most seriously smitten with her, as
much so, that is to say, as his idolatry of himself left him capable of
being with any person. And so it proved, for in less time than she had
any idea that it was possible to go to and return from New York, back
came her Broadway beau. Mary opened her large blue eyes in most
unaffected astonishment, as he came up to the door at which she was
standing, equipped for a walk with Kelson. She made no scruple of
consigning him to her father a