But as this is a prosaic subject, I must begin at the beginning. On my voyage out, before I had had time to generalise a conclusion on such a subject, a gentleman among the passengers confided to me, as the result of his own experience, that New England young ladies (of course he did not mean this of the young ladies who belonged to the upper ten thousand) never appeared less amiable than when at breakfast. A long and large experience enabled him to speak with some authority on this subject; though, as I afterwards discovered, he was not a quite unprejudiced commentator. I declined to accept his conclusion, notwithstanding his pointing out to me two young ladies who seemed to confirm it by disposing, each of them every morning, of a beefsteak, while they were considering what they would order for breakfast, and then going through a performance of varieties which was in very good keeping with the prologue. One ought to be sparing of comment on a neighbour’s way of managing himself. You are not acquainted with his constitution, or with the atmosphere he has to live in, or with the kind of work he has to do; and these things may render advisable in his case what would not suit yourself. But if you know that some of his habits are such as do not generally conduce to a sound sanitary condition, and then see that the doctor is the most frequent visitor in his house, you can hardly help coupling the two facts together in the relation of cause and effect. Now it happens that wherever one is in the United States, the most prominent and abundant _affiches_ are those that recommend different kinds of ‘bitters.’ There are ‘Red jacket bitters,’ and ‘Planters’ bitters,’ ‘French,’ ‘German,’ ‘Mexican,’ and ‘American bitters,’ but no English, which I am disposed to take as a compliment implying that Englishmen need no such restoratives, for it can hardly mean that the name would be no recommendation. And there are bitters from the four quarters of the compass, limiting the range, I suppose, to American soil. All this of course implies that in our neighbour’s case ‘perfect order does not reign in the interior;’ and it struck me that his constant habit of beginning the day with a breakfast that for its variety and solidity would be sufficient for a dinner on this side, had something to do with it. I hazard this, though the reply is obvious that one does not know what is requisite in this way in America. It is possible too that these bitters may not always mean what the traveller is likely to suppose. I say this because, on an occasion when a fractured rail delayed the train on the banks of the Mississippi for several hours, and every one produced what he had in the way of resources for passing away the time, an American I was then with produced from his hand-bag a bottle of what he called ‘Angostura bitters.’ I was rather surprised at his offering me a glass of it, thinking from its name that it must be something medicinal. I found it,