ot a great deal more than we do here. But
our girls' heads are busy with polkas rather than walks, and then the
weather makes a good excuse for them. It can't be denied, though,
Ashburner, that your countrymen, after being here a short time, exercise
as little as we do ourselves; yet it's hard to say which has the most to
do with their degeneracy--example or weather."

"But," said Ashburner, "I should not think that hot or cold weather
could prevent a gentleman from having a light and handsome boat."

"Yes, it does," rejoined Harry, "not directly, but indirectly. The
weather, business, and amusements, turn attention into other channels,
and consequently our country gentleman does not keep his light skiff
and picturesque boat-house, because there's nobody to row the one or
admire the other. Now, here's Karl, who lives in the country, and
continually talks about country air and country exercise, why, bless
you! if I hadn't taught him to ride, he wouldn't exercise at all: he
does not walk a mile a day; hasn't rowed across the river since he's
lived here; wouldn't join in a cricket-match to save himself from
apoplexy; in short, is as lazy a fellow as can possibly be found. Then
our country girls are just the same. Once in a while they ride, but
there are hundreds of them living in the country who have never been on
horseback; and when they do know how, they ride rarely, because they've
no one to ride with them,--a young lady's dashing off ten or twelve
miles with only a servant after her would be thought highly improper.
Then, the way we dress is perfectly ridiculous: nothing
substantial--nothing useful; a girl's walking shoes are as thin as
paper; an English nobleman wears heavier boots than one of our laborers.
The truth is, we have a great deal too much of Paris refinement; we must
get England to come over and _uncivilize_ us. If we do live in a new
country, we want to learn a few of the barbarous arts of riding,
driving, walking, hunting, &c. It's a pity, too, that our young men,
instead of being hale, hearty fellows, such as you have at the English
universities, are generally a thin, hollow-chested, dyspeptic,
consumptive-looking set--children at twenty, and old men at thirty."

Ashburner had noticed this before, and it had surprised him that in a
land where, less than a century ago, the inhabitants were literally
denizens of the wilderness, he should find fewer field sports and less
attention paid to that class of a