of sitting down and eating with you, they have fixed the hour at twelve o'clock, the time that the great and fashionable people take their breakfasts. You must have your breakfasts at home at the usual hour, and take your usual _drive_ before you go; so you will have plenty of time for all, and be in good humour when you go there, where you will see many fine ladies and be made very happy." My remarks opened a new batch of difficulties to them that I had not apprehended, some of which were exceedingly embarrassing. To wait four hours, and to eat and to ride in the meantime, would be to derange the streaks of paint and also to soil many articles of dress which could not be put on excepting on very particular occasions. To take them off and put them on, and to go through the vexations of the toilet again, at eleven o'clock, was what several of the party could submit to, and others could not. As to the breakfast of huge beefsteaks and coffee which was just coming up, I had felt no apprehensions; but when it was on the table I learned that the _old Doctor_ and _Wash-ka-mon-ya_ and one or two others of the young men were adhering to a custom of their country, and which, in my rusticity (having been seven or eight years out of Indian life), I had at the moment lost sight of. It is the habit in their country, when an Indian is invited to a feast, to go as hungry as he can, so as to be as fashionable as possible, by eating an enormous quantity, and for this purpose the invitations are generally extended some time beforehand, paying the valued compliment to the invited guest of allowing as much time as he can possibly require for starving himself and preparing his stomach by tonics taken in bitter decoctions of medicinal herbs. In this case the invitation had only been received the day before, and of course allowed them much less than the usual time to prepare to be _fashionable_. They had, however, received the information just in time for the _Doctor_ and _Wash-ka-mon-ya_ and the _Roman-nose_ to avoid the annoyance of their dinners and suppers on that day, and they had now laid themselves aside in further preparation for the _feast_ in which they were to be candidates for the mastery in emptying plates and handling the "knife and fork" (or "knife and fingers"), the custom of their country.