g vulgar, slipshod, and
shiftless, it is a man lounging about with his hands in his pockets.
If you have paws, stow them away; but if you are endowed with hands,
learn to carry them properly, or else cut them off. Nor can I abide a
man's looking as if he were under control. I wish him to BE
submissive, but I don't wish him to LOOK so. He shall do just as he is
bidden, but he shall carry himself like the man and monarch he was made
to be. Let him stay where he is put, yet not as if he were put there,
but as if he had taken his position deliberately. But, of all things,
to have a man act as if he were a clod just emerged for the first time
from his own barnyard! Upon this occasion, however, I was too much
absorbed in my errand to note anybody's demeanor, and I threaded
straightway the crowd of customers, went up to the counter, and
inquired in a clear voice,--

"Have you lace nightcaps?"

The clerk looked at me with a troubled, bewildered glance, and made no
reply. I supposed he had not understood me, and repeated the question.
Then he answered, dubiously,--

"We have breakfast-caps."

It was my turn to look bewildered. What had I to do with
breakfast-caps? What connection was there between my question and his
answer? What field was there for any further inquiry? "Have you
ox-bows?" imagine a farmer to ask. "We have rainbows," says the
shopman. "Have you cameo-pins?" inquires the elegant Mrs. Jenkins.
"We have linchpins." "Have you young apple trees?" asks the
nursery-man. "We have whiffletrees." If I had wanted breakfast-caps,
shouldn't I have asked for breakfast-caps? Or do the Boston people
take their breakfast at one o'clock in the morning? I concluded that
the man was demented, and marched out of the shop. When I laid the
matter before Halicarnassus, the following interesting colloquy took
place.

I. "What do you suppose it meant?"

H. "He took you for a North American Indian."

I. "What do you mean?"

H. "He did not understand your patois."

I. "What patois?"

H. "Your squaw dialect. You should have asked for a bonnet de nuit."

I. "Why?"

H. "People never talk about nightcaps in good society."

I. "Oh!"

I was very warm, and Halicarnassus said he was tired; so he went into a
restaurant and ordered strawberries,--that luscious fruit, quivering on
the border-land of ambrosia and nectar.

"Doubtless," says honest, quaint, delightful Isaac,--and he never spoke
a truer wo