-burner, could venture to greet the ladies of the household, and
pails of water were accordingly furnished hard by the gable end of the
house. There was no towel visible, however, and the visitor, with his
hands and face dripping from recent immersion, was pained to see that
some difficulty had arisen out of his request for one. Then, with sudden
impulse, one of the young men went away, and returned in a minute or two
with a long and richly embroidered scarf, the golden web interwoven with
which, as well as the deep lace border, stamped it as a tissue of price.
Assured by the young men that this brocade was inured to duty as the
regular family towel, the visitor made use of it as such. The texture of
it, as he told me, was not pleasant to the face, and it abraded a good
deal of the skin from his nose. It went the rounds after he had used it,
and the party adjourned to the dinner-table, where some remark was made
as to the non-appearance of the daughter of the house. Presently that
young lady entered, however, and took her place at the dinner-table. She
had evidently bestowed some extra care upon her toilet in honor of the
guest from beyond the "timber limits"; but what chiefly attracted his
notice in her costume was a curious, gold-embroidered scarf, with deep
lace edges, the folds of which, although artfully cast, revealed here
and there the smudges of soiled hands. Indeed, my informant--who was a
little given to exaggeration, perhaps--used to aver that he recognized
upon the mystic garment, just at the point where it was crossed upon the
bosom of the lovely sylvan damsel, a portion of the cuticle of his own
Roman nose.

In another of these settlements,--it was remote, then, though now it has
a great line of railway running through it,--things used to be carried
to an extreme just the opposite of that above noticed. It was a little
English colony, several of the members of which were persons of
tolerably good means, with influential family connections at home.
Engaged, mostly, in agricultural pursuits, they could chop down trees,
and drive oxen, and plough, and mow, as well as any lout in the country
round, and some of them built their own houses and made furniture for
them. They had been swells, though, before they became "hawbucks," and
they brought some of their standard manners and customs with them. It
was considered proper in this community to dine at the fashionable hour
of six, when every person was expected to