capering about in an apartment fifteen feet square, which
hardly gave them room to pass one another. Benson was the only person
who entered his protest against the proceeding. He declared it was a
shame that his countrywomen should degrade themselves so before
foreigners; but his expostulations were only laughed at: nor could he
even persuade his wife and sister-in-law to quit the place, though he
stalked off himself in high dudgeon, and wrote a letter to the
_Episcopal Banner_, inveighing against the shameless dissipation of the
watering-places. For Harry was on very good terms with the religious
people in New-York, and was professedly a religious man, and had some
sort of idea that he mixed with the fashionables to do them good; which
was much like what we sometimes hear of a parson who follows the hounds
to keep the sportsmen from swearing, and about as successful. Trying
with all his might to serve God, and to live with the exclusives, he was
in a fair way to get a terrible fall between two stools.

Talking of religion brings us naturally to Sunday, which at Oldport was
really required as a day of rest. But whether it would have been so or
not is doubtful, only that the Puritan habits of the country made
dancing on that day impossible. It was a violation of public opinion,
and of the actual law of the land, which no one cared to attempt. The
fashionables were thus left almost without resource. The young men went
off to dine somewhere in the vicinity, not unfrequently taking with them
some of Mr. Monson's dancing-girls; the wearied men, and the women
generally, were in a sad state of listlessness. Some of them literally
went to bed and slept for the rest of the week; others, in very despair
of something to do, went to church and fell asleep there. Ashburner took
advantage of the lull to fill up his journal, and put down his
observations on the society about him, in which he had remarked some
striking peculiarities, apart from the dancing mania and other outward
and open characteristics.

The first thing that surprised him was the great number of
misunderstandings and quarrels existing among the not very large number
of people who composed the fashionable set. They seemed to quarrel with
their relatives in preference, as a matter of course; and to admit
strangers very readily to the privilege of relatives. The Robinsons were
at feud with all their cousins: Benson with most of his, except Ludlow.
Ludlow, White, Sumne