habits equally fatal to their sobriety, of which I have heard several Englishmen complain bitterly. The one is mixing their wines in a most unorthodox manner, equally distressing to the palate and the stomach; _i. e._ giving you to drink by turns, after dinner, claret, madeira, sherry, hock, champagne, all and each of which you are pressed to take as specimens of excellence in their various ways, forming altogether a vinous hotch-potch, which confounds alike the taste and the brain. The second ordeal, to which the sobriety of Englishmen dining out here is exposed, is at the close of all these various libations,--which of course last some time,--an instantaneous removal from the dinner to the supper table, where strong _whisky punch_ effectually _finishes_ the wits of their guests, and sends them home to repent for two days the excess of a few hours. Perhaps, when the real meaning of the word _society_ becomes better understood in this country, absurd display and disgusting intemperance will no more be resorted to as its necessary accompaniments; but of course the _real_ material of which society should be formed must increase a little first. I have been told that the women in this country drink. I never saw but one circumstance which would lead me to believe the assertion. At the baths in New York, one day, I saw the girl who was waiting upon the rooms carry mint julaps (a preparation of mint, sugar, and brandy,) into three of them. I was much surprised, and asked her if this was a piece of service she often performed for the ladies who visited the baths? She said, "Yes, pretty often." Bar-rooms are annexed to every species of public building,--in the theatres, in the hotels, in the bath-houses, on board the steam-boats,--and there are even temporary buildings which serve this purpose erected at certain distances along the rail-roads. Though the gentlemen drink more than any other _gentlemen_, the lower orders here are more temperate than with us. The appearance of a drunken man in the streets is comparatively rare here; and certainly Sunday is not, as with us, the appointed day for this disgusting vice among the lower classes here. Fortunately, most fortunately, it is not with them as with us, the only day on which the poor have rest, or drunkenness the only substitute they can find for every other necessary or comfort of life. Our poor are indeed intemperate. Alas! that vice of theirs will surely be visited on others; for it is the offspring of their misery. The effects of habitual intemperance in this country are lamentably visible in many young men of respectable stations and easy circumstances; and it is by no means uncommon to hear of young gentlemen--persons who rank as such here--destroying their health, their faculties, and eventually their lives, at a most untimely age, by this debasing habit.