"You forget, Ned," said John Effingham, with a sneer, "that an American _always_ means just eighteen months. _Antiquity_ is reached in five lustres, and the dark ages at the end of a human life. I dare say these amiable young gentlemen, who enliven their sports with so many agreeable oaths, would think you very unreasonable and encroaching to presume to tell them they are unwelcome." "To own the truth, Mr. John, it _would_ be downright unpopular." "As I cannot permit the ears of the ladies to be offended with these rude brawls, and shall never consent to have grounds that are so limited, and which so properly belong to the very privacy of my dwelling, invaded in this coarse manner, I beg, Mr. Bragg, that you will, at once, desire these young men to pursue their sports somewhere else." Aristabulus received this commission with a very ill grace; for, while his native sagacity told him that Mr. Effingham was right, he too well knew the loose habits that had been rapidly increasing in the country during the last ten years, not to foresee that the order would do violence to all the apprentices' preconceived notions of their immunities; for, as he had truly stated, things move at so quick a pace in America, and popular feeling is so arbitrary, that a custom of a twelve months' existence is deemed sacred, until the public, itself, sees fit to alter it. He was reluctantly quitting the party, on his unpleasant duty, when Mr. Effingham turned to a servant, who belonged to the place, and bade him go to the village barber, and desire him to come to the Wigwam to cut his hair; Pierre, who usually performed that office for him, being busied in unpacking trunks. "Never mind, Tom," said Aristabulus obligingly, as he took up his hat; "I am going into the street, and will give the message to Mr. Lather." "I cannot think, sir, of employing you on such a duty," hastily interposed Mr. Effingham, who felt a gentleman's reluctance to impose an unsuitable office on any of his dependants--"Tom, I am sure, will do me the favour." "Do not name it, my dear sir; nothing makes me happier than to do these little errands, and, another time, you can do as much for me." Aristabulus now went his way more cheerfully, for he determined to go first to the barber, hoping that some expedient might suggest itself, by means of which he could coax the apprentices from the lawn, and thus escape the injury to his popularity, that he so much dreaded. It is true, these apprentices were not voters, but then some of them speedily would be, and all of them, moreover, had _tongues_, an instrument Mr. Bragg held in quite as much awe as some men dread salt-petre. In passing the ball-players, he called out in a wheedling tone to their ringleader, a notorious street brawler-- "A fine time for sport, Dickey; don't you think there would be more room in the broad street than on this crowded lawn, where you lose your ball so often in the shrubbery?"