he day, proceeded to send to
the hotel for a beefsteak and a bottle of British Stout which could be
warranted of genuine importation.

"And stop, stop, sister!" whispered the Colonel, pursuing her to the
door; "the idea seems absurd, to be sure, but still don't you think it
barely possible, that, if Betty ran down to the river and caught a few
of those snapping-turtles sunning themselves upon the old log, we might
boil them into something which would faintly remind Sir Joseph of the
Lord Mayor's soup?"

This proposition being dismissed as impracticable,--first, by reason of
the notorious unwillingness of the turtles to be caught, and, waiving
that objection, because of the length of time it would take to achieve
any passable imitation of the aldermanic dainty,--I was moved to an
_aside_-declaration to the effect that my slight observation of the
tastes of British tourists in the Federal States led to the suggestion
of _oysters_ as delicacies not wholly unlikely to find favor with their
eminent guest.

An explosion of impulsive gratitude responded to the hint. There was a
new "saloon" just opened in Main Street,--Betty should stop there and
leave a generous order.

Well! it was some time before we were summoned to our amended dinner;
but, when we did get it, it was a dinner worth waiting for.

Sir Joseph Barley--Heaven bless him!--knew nothing of that smattering of
Cosmos into which we hungry New-Englanders are wont to thrust our wits.
He bluntly declared that he had never heard of Detached Vitalized
Electricity, Woman's Rights, or Harmonial Development; also, he was
delightfully confident that--he, Sir Joseph Barley, British subject,
_not_ having heard of them--they could not, by any possibility, be worth
hearing about. Moreover, he had not read a word of Carlyle, and
positively did not know of the existence of any English poet called
Browning. Dr. Burge, he thoughtfully suggested, had probably mistaken
the name; it was Byron, or possibly Bulwer, about whom he wished to
inquire. The former of these personages was a British Peer, and a writer
of some celebrity; he was, however, no longer living, having never
recovered from a fever he took at a place called Missolonghi, in
Greece;--the latter had written a book entitled "Pelham," once popular,
but now thought inferior to a series of romances known in Great Britain
as the "Waverley Novels"; these were the work of one Scott, a native of
Edinburgh, whom George IV. hono