ed to
like it. When taken with claret and sugar it makes delicious
wine and water.

It is the custom for the gentlemen to go to market at Cincinnati;
the smartest men in the place, and those of the "highest
standing" do not scruple to leave their beds with the sun, six
days in the week, and, prepared with a mighty basket, to sally
forth in search of meat, butter, eggs and vegetables. I have
continually seen them returning, with their weighty basket on one
arm and an enormous ham depending from the other.

And now arrived the 4th of July, that greatest of all American
festivals. On the 4th of July, 1776, the declaration of their
independence was signed, at the State-house in Philadelphia.

To me, the dreary coldness and want of enthusiasm in American
manners is one of their greatest defects, and I therefore hailed
the demonstrations of general feeling which this day elicits with
real pleasure. On the 4th of July the hearts of the people seem
to awaken from a three hundred and sixty-four days' sleep; they
appear high-spirited, gay, animated, social, generous, or at
least liberal in expense; and would they but refrain from
spitting on that hallowed day, I should say, that on the 4th of
July, at least, they appeared to be an amiable people. It is
true that the women have but little to do with the pageantry, the
splendour, or the gaiety of the day; but, setting this defect
aside, it was indeed a glorious sight to behold a jubilee so
heartfelt as this; and had they not the bad taste and bad feeling
to utter an annual oration, with unvarying abuse of the mother
country, to say nothing of the warlike manifesto called
Declaration of Independence, our gracious king himself might look
upon the scene and say that it was good; nay, even rejoice, that
twelve millions of bustling bodies, at four thousand miles
distance from his throne and his altars, should make their own
laws, and drink their own tea, after the fashion that pleased
them best.

One source of deep interest to us, in this new clime, was the
frequent recurrence of thunderstorms. Those who have only
listened to thunder in England have but a faint idea of the
language which the gods speak when they are angry. Thomson's
description, however, will do: it is hardly possible that words
can better paint the spectacle, or more truly echo to the sound,
than his do. The only point he does not reach is the vast blaze
of rose-coloured light that ever and anon sets