on of your principal
absconding debtors. This served for what is called, at public dinners,
the intellectual feast; while the carnal appetite was satisfied with
fried pork, ditto roasted, strong coffee, turnips, potatoes, and a good
deal of gravy. For dessert, (at which point Nathaniel regained his
appetite,) we had mince-pie, apple-pie, and lemon-pie, the latter being
a structure of a two-story description, an additional staging of crust
being somehow inserted between upper and under. We lingered long at that
noon meal,--fifteen minutes, at the very least; for you hospitably said
that you did not have these little social festivals very often,--owing
to frequent illness in the family, and other causes,--and mast make the
most of it.

I did not see much of you during that afternoon; it was a magnificent
day, and I said, that, being a visitor, I would look about and see the
new buildings. The truth was, I felt a sneaking desire to witness the
match-game on the Common, between the Union Base-Ball Club, No. 1, of
Ward Eleven, and the Excelsiors of Smithville. I remember that you
looked a little dissatisfied, when I came into the counting-room, and
rather shook your head over my narrative (perhaps too impassioned) of
the events of the game. "Those young fellows," said you, "may not _all_
be shiftless, dissipated characters, _yet_,--but see what it comes
to! They a'n't content with wasting their time,--they kill it, Sir,
actually kill it!" When I thought of the manly figures and handsome,
eager faces of my friends of the "Union" and the "Excelsior,"--the
Excelsiors won by ten tallies, I should say, the return match to come
off at Smithville the next month,--and then looked at the meagre form
and wan countenance of their critic, I thought to myself, "Dolorosus, my
boy, you are killing something besides Time, if you only knew it."

However, indigo had risen again, and your spirits also. As we walked
home, you gave me a precise exhibit of your income and expenditures for
the last five years, and a prospective sketch of the same for the next
ten; winding up with an incidental delineation of the importance, to a
man of business, of a good pew in some respectable place of worship. We
found Mrs. D., as usual, ready at the table; we partook of pound-cake
(or pound-and-a-half, I should say) and sundry hot cups of a very
Cisatlantic beverage, called by the Chinese epithet of tea,--and went,
immediately after, to a prayer-meeting. The