e and compass,
denied access to water-colors, Indian-ink, or charcoal, spent a most
woful day of weary expectancy.

It was, indeed, an awful scene of trouble, fatigue, and exertion
on every side, adding one more to those million instances where the
preparation for the guest has no possible relation to the degree of
esteem he is held in. For so is it in the world: our best receptions
are decreed to those we care least for; our "friend" is condemned to
the family dinner, while we lavish our fortune on mere acquaintances. In
these days the fatted calf would not have been killed to commemorate the
return of the prodigal, but have been melted down into mock-turtle, to
feast "my Lord" or "Your Grace."

The day wore on, and as the arrangements drew nearer to completion, the
anxieties were turned towards the guests themselves, who were to have
arrived at five o'clock. It was now six, and yet no sign of their
coming! Fully a dozen times had Mrs. Ricketts called Martha from some
household cares by the adjuration, "Sister Anne, sister Anne, seest thou
nobody coming?" Mercury had twice ventured out on the high-road, from
which he was driven back by a posse of hooting and laughing children;
and Dalton himself paced up and down the terrace in a state of nervous
impatience, not a little stimulated by hunger and certain flying visits
he paid to the iced punch, to see if it was keeping cool.

There is, assuredly, little mesmeric relation between the expecting host
and the lingering guest, or we should not witness all that we do of our
friends' unpunctuality in this life. What a want of sympathy between the
feverish impatience of the one and the careless dalliance of the other!
Not that we intend this censure to apply to the case before us, for
Haggerstone had not the very remotest conception of the honors that
awaited him, and jogged along his dusty road with no greater desire
to be at the end of the journey than was fairly justifiable in one who
travelled with German post-horses and Foglass for a companion.

Six o'clock came, and, after another hour of fretful anxiety, it
struck seven. By this time beef had become carbon, and fowls were like
specimens of lava; the fish was reduced to the state of a "puree,"
while everything meant to assume the flinty resistance of ice was calmly
settling down into a fluid existence. Many an architectural device of
poor Martha's genius was doomed to the fate of her other "castles," and
towers and mi