“... I have a long score of pleasant recollections of the friendships, the popular renowns, the household charms, the _bonhomie_, the free confidences and the personal accomplishments of the day.... In the train of these goodly groups come the gallants who upheld the chivalry of the age, cavaliers of the old school, full of starch and powder: most of them the iron gentlemen of the Revolution, with leather faces--old campaigners, renowned for long stories: not long enough absent from the camp to lose their military _brusquerie_ and dare-devil swagger; proper roystering blades, who had not long ago got out of harness and begun to affect the elegancies of civil life. Who but they! jolly fellows, fiery and loud, with stern glance of the eye and brisk turn of the head, and swash-buckler strut of defiance, like game-cocks, all in three-cornered cocked hats and powdered hair and cues, and light-colored coats with narrow capes and marvellous long backs, with the pockets on each hip, and small-clothes that hardly reached the knee, with striped stockings, with great buckles in their shoes, and their long steel watch-chains that hung conceitedly half-way to the knee, with seals in the shape of a sounding-board to a pulpit; and they walked with such a stir, striking their canes so hard upon the pavement as to make the little town ring again. I defy all modern coxcombry to produce anything equal to it--there was such a relish of peace about it, and particularly when one of these weather-beaten gallants accosted a lady in the street with a bow that required a whole side pavement to make it in, with the scrape of his foot, and his cane thrust with a flourish under his left arm till it projected behind along with his cue, like the palisades of a _chevaux-de-frise_; and nothing could be more piquant than the lady as she reciprocated the salutation with a curtsey that seemed to carry her into the earth, with her chin bridled to her breast, and such a volume of dignity.” [Illustration: ST. PAUL’S CHURCH. FROM AN OLD COPPER PRINT.]