der. Envelop adherent, not sealed. Addressed

LANGDON ESQ.
Present.

Brought by H. Frederic Sprowle, youngest son of the Colonel,--the H. of
course standing for the paternal Hezekiah, put in to please the father,
and reduced to its initial to please the mother, she having a marked
preference for Frederic. Boy directed to wait for an answer.

"Mr. Langdon has the pleasure of accepting Mr. and Mrs. Colonel
Sprowle's polite invitation for Wednesday evening."

On plain paper, sealed with an initial.

In walking along the main street, Mr. Bernard had noticed a large house
of some pretensions to architectural display, namely, unnecessarily
projecting eaves, giving it a mushroomy aspect, wooden mouldings at
various available points, and a grandiose arched portico. It looked a
little swaggering by the side of one or two of the mansion-houses that
were not far from it, was painted too bright for Mr. Bernard's taste,
had rather too fanciful a fence before it, and had some fruit-trees
planted in the front-yard, which to this fastidious young gentleman
implied a defective sense of the fitness of things, not promising
in people who lived in so large a house, with a mushroom roof and a
triumphal arch for its entrance.

This place was known as "Colonel Sprowle's villa," (genteel
friends,)--as "the elegant residence of our distinguished
fellow-citizen, Colonel Sprowle," (Rockland Weekly Universe,)--as "the
neew haouse," (old settlers,)--as "Spraowle's Folly," (disaffected
and possibly envious neighbors,)--and in common discourse, as "the
Colonel's."

Hezekiah Sprowle, Esquire, Colonel Sprowle of the Commonwealth's
Militia, was a retired "merchant." An India merchant he might, perhaps,
have been properly called; for he used to deal in West India goods, such
as coffee, sugar, and molasses, not to speak of rum,--also in tea, salt
fish, butter and cheese, oil and candles, dried fruit, agricultural
"p'doose" generally, industrial products, such as boots and shoes,
and various kinds of iron and wooden ware, and at one end of the
establishment in calicoes and other stuffs,--to say nothing of
miscellaneous objects of the most varied nature, from sticks of candy,
which tempted in the smaller youth with coppers in their fists, up to
ornamental articles of apparel, pocket-books, breast-pins, gilt-edged
Bibles, stationery, in short, everything which was like to prove
seductive to the rural population. The Colonel had m