lived under a broom: "All she wanted was elbow-room." Let us
not tell how one glass is made to answer for thirty fair faces, one ewer
and vase for thirty lavations; and--tell it not in Gath--one towel for a
company! Let us not intimate how ladies' shoes have, in a night,
clandestinely slid into the gentlemen's cabin, and gentlemen's boots
elbowed, or, rather, _toed_ their way among ladies' gear, nor recite the
exclamations after runaway property that are heard.

"I can't find nothing of Johnny's shoe!" "Here's a shoe in the
water-pitcher--is this it?" "My side-combs are gone!" exclaims a nymph
with dishevelled curls. "Massy! do look at my bonnet!" exclaims an old
lady, elevating an article crushed into as many angles as there are
pieces in a mince-pie. "I never did sleep _so much together_ in my
life," echoes a poor little French lady, whom despair has driven into
talking English.

But our shortening paper warns us not to prolong our catalogue of
distresses beyond reasonable bounds, and therefore we will close with
advising all our friends, who intend to try this way of travelling for
_pleasure_, to take a good stock both of patience and clean towels with
them, for we think that they will find abundant need for both.

CHAPTER IV.

"SAMPLES" HERE AND THERE.

Next comes Mrs. Caroline M. Kirkland with her Western sketches. Many
will remember her laughable description of "Borrowing Out West," with
its two appropriate mottoes: "Lend me your ears," from Shakespeare, and
from Bacon: "Grant graciously what you cannot refuse safely."

"'Mother wants your sifter,' said Miss Ianthe Howard, a young lady of
six years' standing, attired in a tattered calico thickened with dirt;
her unkempt locks straggling from under that hideous substitute for a
bonnet so universal in the Western country--a dirty cotton
handkerchief--which is used _ad nauseam_ for all sorts of purposes.

"'Mother wants your sifter, and she says she guesses you can let her
have some sugar and tea, 'cause you've got plenty.' This excellent
reason, ''cause you've got plenty,' is conclusive as to sharing with
neighbors.

"Sieves, smoothing-irons, and churns run about as if they had legs; one
brass kettle is enough for a whole neighborhood, and I could point to a
cradle which has rocked half the babies in Montacute.

"For my own part, I have lent my broom, my thread, my tape, my spoons,
my cat, my thimble, my scissors, my shawl, my shoes, and have been