f the Americans, and the constant intercourse mutually
maintained by the inhabitants of the different States. A droll or
an original expression is thus imported and adopted, and, though not
indigenous, soon becomes engrafted on the general stock of the language
of the country."--3rd Series, p. 142.]

"I was ready to bile right over, when as luck would have it, the rain
stopt all of a sudden, the sun broke out o' prison, and I thought I
never seed any thing look so green and so beautiful as the country
did. 'Come,' sais I, 'now for a walk down the avenue, and a comfortable
smoke, and if the man at the gate is up and stirrin', I will just pop in
and breakfast with him and his wife. There is some natur there, but here
it's all cussed rooks and chimbly swallers, and heavy men and fat
women, and lazy helps, and Sunday every day in the week.' So I fills my
cigar-case and outs into the passage.

"But here was a fix! One of the doors opened into the great staircase,
and which was it? 'Ay,' sais I, 'which is it, do you know?' 'Upon my
soul, I don't know,' sais I; 'but try, it's no use to be caged up here
like a painter, and out I will, that's a fact.'

"So I stops and studies, 'that's it,' sais I, and I opens a door: it was
a bedroom--it was the likely chambermaid's.

"'Softly, Sir,' sais she, a puttin' of her finger on her lip, 'don't
make no noise; Missus will hear you.'

"'Yes,' sais I, 'I won't make no noise;' and I outs and shuts the door
too arter me gently.

"'What next?' sais I; 'why you fool, you,' sais I, 'why didn't you ax
the sarvant maid, which door it was?' 'Why I was so conflastrigated,'
sais I, 'I didn't think of it. Try that door,' well I opened another, it
belonged to one o' the horrid hansum stranger galls that dined at table
yesterday. When she seed me, she gave a scream, popt her head onder the
clothes, like a terrapin, and vanished--well I vanished too.

"'Ain't this too bad?' sais I; 'I wish I could open a man's door, I'd
lick him out of spite; I hope I may be shot if I don't, and I doubled
up my fist, for I didn't like it a spec, and opened another door--it was
the housekeeper's. 'Come,' sais I, 'I won't be balked no more.' She sot
up and fixed her cap. A woman never forgets the becomins.

"'Anything I can do for you, Sir?' sais she, and she raelly did look
pretty; all good natur'd people, it appears to me, do look so.

"'Will you be so good as to tell me, which door leads to the staircase,
Marm