ple-pies, or saucers full of preserved peaches and pears;
but it was always sure to boast an enormous dish of balls of sweetened
dough, fried in hog's fat, and called doughnuts, or olykoeks--a delicious
kind of cake, at present scarce known in this city, except in genuine
Dutch families.

The tea was served out of a majestic delf teapot, ornamented with
paintings of fat little Dutch shepherds and shepherdesses, tending pigs,
with boats sailing in the air, and houses built in the clouds, and sundry
other ingenious Dutch fantasies. The beaux distinguished themselves by
their adroitness in replenishing this pot from a huge copper tea-kettle,
which would have made the pigmy macaronies of these degenerate days sweat
merely to look at it. To sweeten the beverage, a lump of sugar was laid
beside each cup, and the company alternately nibbled and sipped with great
decorum; until an improvement was introduced by a shrewd and economic old
lady, which was to suspend a large lump directly over the tea-table by a
string from the ceiling, so that it could be swung from mouth to mouth--an
ingenious expedient, which is still kept up by some families in Albany,
but which prevails without exception in Communipaw, Bergen Flatbush, and
all our uncontaminated Dutch villages.

At these primitive tea parties the utmost propriety and dignity of
deportment prevailed. No flirting nor coquetting--no gambling of old
ladies, nor hoyden chattering and romping of young ones--no
self-satisfied struttings of wealthy gentlemen with their brains in their
pockets--nor amusing conceits and monkey divertissements of smart young
gentlemen with no brains at all. On the contrary, the young ladies seated
themselves demurely in their rush-bottomed chairs, and knit their own
woollen stockings; nor ever opened their lips excepting to say "_yah
Mynheer_," or "_yah ya Vrouw_," to any question that was asked them;
behaving, in all things, like decent, well-educated damsels. As to the
gentlemen, each of them tranquilly smoked his pipe, and seemed lost in
contemplation of the blue and white tiles with which the fireplaces were
decorated; wherein sundry passages of Scripture were piously
portrayed--Tobit and his dog figured to great advantage, Haman swung
conspicuously on his gibbet, and Jonah appeared most manfully bouncing out
of the whale like Harlequin through a barrel of fire.

The parties broke up without noise and without confusion. They were
carried home by the