. She agreed that it
would be delightful, but she added, "I fear you will not succeed;
we are not used to such sort of things here, and I know it is
considered very indelicate for ladies and gentlemen to sit down
together on the grass."

I could multiply anecdotes of this nature; but I think these
sufficient to give an accurate idea of the tone of manners in
this particular, and I trust to justify the observations I
have made.

One of the spectacles which produced the greatest astonishment
on us all was the Republican simplicity of the courts of justice.
We had heard that the judges indulged themselves on the bench
in those extraordinary attitudes which, doubtless, some
peculiarity of the American formation leads them to find the
most comfortable. Of this we were determined to judge for
ourselves, and accordingly entered the court when it was in full
business, with three judges on the bench. The annexed sketch
will better describe what we saw than any thing I can write.

Our winter passed rapidly away, and pleasantly enough, by the
help of frosty walks, a little skaiting, a visit to Big-Bone
Lick, and a visit to the shaking Quakers, a good deal of chess,
and a good deal of reading, notwithstanding we were almost in the
back woods of Western America.

The excursion to Big-Bone Lick, in Kentucky, and that to the
Quaker village, were too fatiguing for females at such a season,
but our gentlemen brought us home mammoth bones and shaking
Quaker stories in abundance.

These singular people, the shaking Quakers of America, give
undeniable proof that communities may exist and prosper, for they
have continued for many years to adhere strictly to this manner
of life, and have been constantly increasing in wealth. They
have formed two or three different societies in distant parts of
the Union, all governed by the same general laws, and all
uniformly prosperous and flourishing.

There must be some sound and wholesome principle at work in these
establishments to cause their success in every undertaking, and
this principle must be a powerful one, for it has to combat much
that is absurd and much that is mischievous.

The societies are generally composed of about an equal proportion
of males and females, many of them being men and their wives; but
they are all bound by their laws not to cohabit together. Their
religious observances are wholly confined to singing and dancing
of the most grotesque kind, and this repeate