prairie, and apparently finding intercommunication quite as difficult. And though the number soon multiplied, till the gentlemen came genial from the dinner-table, we were as solemn and as still as a New-England conference meeting before the minister comes in. This, I think, was rather the effect of accident than fashion, the young lady's quiet and reserved manner having the subduing influence of a whisper. Society here is quieter than ours certainly. This is perhaps the result of the different materials of which it is oompounded. Our New-York evening-parties, you know, are made up of about seventy-five parts boys and girls, the other twenty-five being their papas and mammas, and other ripe men and women. The shunts of a mass of young people, even if they be essentially well-bred, will explode in sound; thence the general din of voices and shouts of laughter at our parties.
I have rarely seen at an evening-party here anything beyond a cup of black tea and a bit of cake dry as "the remainder biscuit after a voyage." Occasionally we have ices (in alarmingly small quantity!) and lemonade, or something of that sort. At L—— house there was a refreshment-table spread for three or four hundred people, much like Miss D.'s at her New-York soirées, which, you may remember, was considered quite a sumptuary phœnomenon. I am thus particular to reiterate to you, dear C., that the English have got so far in civilization as not to deem eating and drinking necessary to the enjoy-
