The first thought of Ashburner as he looked at his companion was, "How
sweetly pretty she is!" the next, "She is certainly very different from
any girl I have seen yet in this country;" and a few moments'
conversation confirmed each opinion. She was in truth a very pretty
girl, not strictly handsome, but of that bright and good-natured winning
beauty that always indicates a warm, kind heart, and always insures its
owner friends as well as admirers. She was below the average height,
with a girlish, though pretty, rounded figure; her dark brown hair fell
smoothly over a white, clear brow, and came down so as partially to hide
a rosy cheek; her dress was simple, but the taste and neatness it
displayed showed that its wearer was a person of refinement.

Ashburner opened the conversation by saying that he supposed Miss
Edwards was a resident of the country, and inquiring how she liked it.
She answered that she far preferred it to the city, and a little
argument ensued, in the course of which she assured Ashburner that the
country was always the pleasantest--one always had so many little things
to be interested in, and so much more time for reading. "There was
nothing," she said, "of the formality and coldness of city life, nor of
its frivolities." It amused Ashburner to hear this philosophy from a
girl of eighteen, one who was pretty enough to command more than her
share of attention, and who was evidently not of those young ladies who,
sincerely desiring to pursue the strict path of duty, make the great
mistake of deriding gayety or pleasure whereever they may happen to find
it. In the meanwhile the other gentlemen became engrossed in the
probable profits of the railroad which was to adorn the other side of
the river, and occasional allusions to the tariff, and chances of the
various candidates for the presidency, in all of which the Bensons
joined as warmly, and laid down their positions as dogmatically (their
contempt for their country, its laws, and affairs, to the contrary
notwithstanding), as though they had not been expressing, an hour or two
before, the most entire ignorance and thorough disdain of and for
railroads, politics, and politicians, and particularly the railroad just
mentioned, and the politics and politicians of the United States. If
Ashburner had listened to this, he would have learned that it is very
often the custom among American gentlemen to sneer at and contemn
political measures, among strangers