mind that!"

"Not much, when it comes up in the ordinary course of conversation;
but it palls upon one when it is asserted for the fourth or fifth
time in an evening."

"Alas, alas!" exclaimed Miss Spalding, with mock energy.

"And why, alas?"

"Because it is so impossible to make the oil and vinegar of the old
world and of the new mix together and suit each other."

"You think it is impossible, Miss Spalding?"

"I fear so. We are so terribly tender, and you are always pinching us
on our most tender spot. And we never meet you without treading on
your gouty toes."

"I don't think my toes are gouty," said he.

"I apologise to your own, individually, Mr. Glascock; but I must
assert that nationally you are subject to the gout."

"That is, when I'm told over and over again that I'm to be cut down
and thrown into the oven--"

"Never mind the oven now, Mr. Glascock. If my friend has been
over-zealous I will beg pardon for her. But it does seem to me,
indeed it does, with all the reverence and partiality I have
for everything European,"--the word European was an offence to
him, and he shewed that it was so by his countenance,--"that the
idiosyncrasies of you and of us are so radically different, that
we cannot be made to amalgamate and sympathise with each other
thoroughly."

He paused for some seconds before he answered her, but it was so
evident by his manner that he was going to speak, that she could
neither leave him nor interrupt him. "I had thought that it might
have been otherwise," he said at last, and the tone of his voice was
so changed as to make her know that he was in earnest.

But she did not change her voice by a single note. "I'm afraid it
cannot be so," she said, speaking after her old fashion--half in
earnest, half in banter. "We may make up our minds to be very civil
to each other when we meet. The threats of the oven may no doubt be
dropped on our side, and you may abstain from expressing in words
your sense of our inferiority."

"I never expressed anything of the kind," he said, quite in anger.

"I am taking you simply as the sample Englishman, not as Mr.
Glascock, who helped me and my sister over the mountains. Such of
us as have to meet in society may agree to be very courteous; but
courtesy and cordiality are not only not the same, but they are
incompatible."

"Why so?"

"Courtesy is an effort, and cordiality is free. I must be allowed
to contradict the friend that I love; but I a