The remainder of the party, to which the reader is now introduced, consisted of the old physician himself, and his wife,--a little sharp old dame, most terrifically stiff and ceremonious, and dressed in the most solemn fashion of half-a-dozen years previous. Her hair, superbly powdered, was most exactly combed straight upright over a cushion, the sides being curiously frizzed, and the back turned up in a broad loop; upon the top of which tower appeared a tremulous little gauze cap, decorated with ribands, and fastened by long pins with heads of diamond-paste. The rest of her dress consisted of a stiff rose-colour silk gown, of great length in the waist, and bordered in every part with rich full trimmings; whilst the front, and all around it, was open, and drawn up in large festoons with knots of riband, discovering an under garment of purple silk, and a round and full-flounced white muslin apron. Black silk shoes, with high French heels and rich diamond-cut steel buckles, completed her costume. Next to this stately dress, if there were any thing in which Mistress Cleopatra Curetoun was most particularly particular, it was in observing and exacting the most punctilious manners, and in the exhibition and preservation of her tea-equipage; a very rare, very small, and very fragile, set of Nan-kin porcelain, which forty years back, was in the highest estimation and value. The recent peace with America, and particularly the arrival of a ship from the United States, had inspired Dr. Downwithit with even more than his usual warmth and energy in discoursing of them, especially when he spake of the unlooked-for happiness and glory of "the Thirteen Stripes of America at that moment flying in the river!" He also farther expressed his joyful zeal by frequent and vigorous blows upon Mrs. Cleopatra's small round tea-table, of the carved Honduras mahogany then so fashionable, which approached in colour to ebony itself. At every stroke of his broad and heavy fist, all the china simultaneously leaped and chattered, and the table declined and rose again with a creaking jerk, which showed how much it was internally affected by the worthy preacher's zealous orations; and it may be doubted if either spring or hinge ever perfectly recovered them. At each of these convulsions, Mrs. Cleopatra regarded her visitor with a withering frown, every lineament of which was visible, from the extremely open character of her head-dress; and she appeared to be earnestly wishing that the boisterous admirer of America were safe in irons on board the vessel he declaimed about, with thrice the thirteen stripes duly laid upon his back.