always in
his hand when he entered the house."

This story, to one who knows New England, is not altogether
incredible. Toward the democratization of this country, yet most
incomplete, it will perhaps be one day conceded that the South has
contributed ideas, and New England sentiment; while the Great West
will have made a partial application of both to the conduct of life.
The Yankees are the kindest and the acutest of our people, and the
most ungraceful. Nowhere in the world is there so much good feeling,
combined with so much rudeness of manner, as in New England. The
South, colonized by Cavaliers, retains much of the Cavalier
improvidence and careless elegance of manner; and Southerners, like
the soil they till, are generous. But the Yankees, descended from
austere and Puritanic farmers, and accustomed to wring their
subsistence from an unwilling soil, possess the sterling virtues of
human nature along with a stiff-jointed awkwardness of manner, and a
sharp angularity of thought, which renders them unpleasing even to
those who respect them most. A Yankee seldom ceases to be provincial.

But John is waiting, hat in hand, to hear what we have to say
respecting his case.

We say that John was wrong in not taking off his hat voluntarily, but
that the feeling which prevented his doing so was right. He was right
in feeling that the accidental circumstance of his being a hired man
gave his employer no claim to any special mark of respect from him;
and, as he considered that the removal of his hat would have been a
special mark of respect, and thus an acknowledgment of social
inferiority, he declined to make that acknowledgment. But John was
mistaken. The act referred to would not have borne such an
interpretation. John ought to have felt that on coming into the
presence of a man, a fellow-citizen and co-sovereign, and particularly
on entering his abode, one of the innumerable royal residences of the
country, some visible sign of respect, some kind of deferential
salutation, is _due_ from the person entering. John should have risen
superior to the mere accident of his position, and remembered only
that he and his employer were men and equals. The positions of the two
men might be reversed in a day; their equality as men and citizens,
nothing but crime could affect.--_James Parton._

III.--A LEARNED MAN AT TABLE.

Some of the many errors which are liable to be committed through
ignorance of usage, are pleasantly poi