s and set in motion the
tongues of legislators--Heaven bless us, how words do get corrupted by
too much use!--in their enumeration of the griefs of the tenants of the
State.

Everything about the Nest was kept in perfect order, and in a condition
to do credit to the energy and taste of my grandmother, who had ordered
all these things for the last few years, or since the death of my
grandfather. This circumstance, connected with the fact that the
building was larger and more costly than those of most of the other
citizens of the country, had, of late years, caused Ravensnest to be
termed an "aristocratic residence." This word "aristocratic," I find
since my return home, has got to be a term of expansive signification,
its meaning depending on the particular habits and opinions of the
person who happens to use it. Thus, he who chews tobacco thinks it
aristocratic in him who deems the practice nasty not to do the same; the
man who stoops accuses him who is straight in the back of having
aristocratic shoulders; and I have actually met with one individual who
maintained that it was excessively aristocratic to pretend not to blow
one's nose with his fingers. It will soon be aristocratic to maintain
the truth of the familiar Latin axiom of "_de gustibus non disputandum
est_."

As we approached the door of the Nest House, which opened on the piazza
that stretched along three sides of the main building, and the outer
ends of both wings, the coachman was walking his horses away from it, on
the road that led to the stables. The party of ladies had made a
considerable circuit after quitting the farm, and had arrived but a
minute before us. All the girls but Mary Warren had entered the house,
careless on the subject of the approach of two pedlars; she remained,
however, at the side of my grandmother, to receive us.

"I believe in my soul," whispered uncle Ro, "that my dear old mother has
a secret presentiment who we are, by her manifesting so much
respect.--T'ousand t'anks, matam, t'ousand t'anks," he continued,
dropping into his half-accurate half-blundering broken English, "for dis
great honour, such as we might not expect das laty of das house to wait
for us at her door."

"This young lady tells me that she has seen you before, and that she
understands you are both persons of education and good manners, who have
been driven from your native country by political troubles. Such being
the case, I cannot regard you as common ped