numbered, without speaking, almost without drawing breath, but following with haggard eyes the dishes that travel away from him, and harpooning them as soon as they come within reach, to seize upon a fresh supply. This first operation finished, the American lights a cigar; goes to the place where spirits are sold, which is here called the bar-room; tosses off a glass of whisky or Madeira, and sets himself to ruminate till the hour of noon. Noon is very far off, and many are unable to get through this mortal interval of four hours without a second and third visit to the dear bar-room, after which they ruminate again. The bell announces luncheon, consisting of soup, a box of sardines, cold meat, butter, and a lump of cheese. At three o'clock, another tap on the tom-tom--the best, the most desired of all; it proclaims dinner, of which the two preceding repasts were but the modest preface. This time the table is covered from one end to the other with vast dishes, containing enormous roasted joints, highly-spiced sauces, prodigious puddings. The same appetite as at breakfast, the same universal silence. No sounds but the clatter of knife and fork, and the crunching of bones between impatient jaws. So great is the hurry in which this third repast is got through, that the diners do not even think of wiping their knives before plunging them into the salt or butter, and napkins are habitually thrown aside, for the manifest reason that the use of the napkin entails a loss of time. Yet these people laugh at Turks for using neither spoons nor forks at their meals. I remember to have eaten a few dinners with Turks, and I declare that they were models of cleanliness compared to those at which I have been compelled to assist in American hotels and steamers. Dinner over, the rest of the day is long to get through. Accordingly, towards seven o'clock, you hear, for the fourth time, the blessed bell inviting the inmates of the building to a cup of tea or coffee, accompanied by cold game or salted meats, after which visits to the bar-room may be recommenced _ad libitum_. To see these men of business thus rush to table, and stow away a whole cargo of miscellaneous viands in less time than a Spaniard takes to imbibe a single cup of chocolate, one might imagine that they consider every minute passed in the dining-room as so much time lost, and that they are in desperate haste to return to their counting-house, and bury themselves in ledgers and day-books. Unfortunately, as on leaving the eating-room I have almost invariably found every man of them with his body on one chair, and his feet, raised to a level with his head, on the back of another, I am bound to conclude that it is not business, but an unparalleled voracity, which induces them to feed at steeple-chase pace.