es with a game of
ball, on the lawn directly in front of the house.

"Surely, Mr. Bragg," said the owner of the Wigwam, with more
displeasure in his voice than was usual for one of his regulated
mind, "you do not countenance this liberty?"

"Liberty, sir!--I am an advocate for liberty wherever I can find it.
Do you refer to the young men on the lawn, Mr. Effingham?"

"Certainly to them, sir; and permit me to say, I think they might
have chosen a more suitable spot for their sports. They are mistaking
_liberties_ for liberty I fear."

"Why, sir, I believe they have _always_ played ball in that precise
locality."

"_Always_!--I can assure you this is a great mistake. What private
family, placed as we are in the centre of a village, would allow of
an invasion of its privacy in this rude manner? Well may the house be
termed a Wigwam, if this whooping is to be tolerated before its
door."

"You forget, Ned," said John Effingham, with a sneer, "that an
American _always_ means just eighteen months. _Antiquity_ is reached
in five lustres, and the dark ages at the end of a human life. I dare
say these amiable young gentlemen, who enliven their sports with so
many agreeable oaths, would think you very unreasonable and
encroaching to presume to tell them they are unwelcome."

"To own the truth, Mr. John, it _would_ be downright unpopular."

"As I cannot permit the ears of the ladies to be offended with these
rude brawls, and shall never consent to have grounds that are so
limited, and which so properly belong to the very privacy of my
dwelling, invaded in this coarse manner, I beg, Mr. Bragg, that you
will, at once, desire these young men to pursue their sports
somewhere else."

Aristabulus received this commission with a very ill grace; for,
while his native sagacity told him that Mr. Effingham was right, he
too well knew the loose habits that had been rapidly increasing in
the country during the last ten years, not to foresee that the order
would do violence to all the apprentices' preconceived notions of
their immunities; for, as he had truly stated, things move at so
quick a pace in America, and popular feeling is so arbitrary, that a
custom of a twelve months' existence is deemed sacred, until the
public, itself, sees fit to alter it. He was reluctantly quitting the
party, on his unpleasant duty, when Mr. Effingham turned to a
servant, who belonged to the place, and bade him go to the village
barber, and desire hi