It was curious how one bred and born in the great city of Paris, with all its sights and sounds, and scenes of excitement and display, could have been so rusticated by time as to feel a lively interest in surveying the motley aspect of this quaint town. There were, it is true, features in the picture very unlike the figures in ‘Old-World’ landscape. A group of ‘red men,’ seated around a fire in the open street, or a squaw carrying on her back a baby, firmly tied to a piece of curved bark; a Southern-stater, with a spanking waggon-team, and two grinning negroes behind, were new and strange elements in the life of a city. Still, the mere movement, the actual busy stir and occupation of the inhabitants, attracted me as much as anything else; and the shops and stalls, where trades were carried on, were a seduction I could not resist. The strict puritanism in which I had lately lived taught me to regard all these things with a certain degree of distrust. They were the impulses of that gold-seeking passion of which Gottfried had spoken so frequently; they were the great vice of that civilisation, whose luxurious tendency he often deplored; and here, now, more than one-half around me were arts that only ministered to voluptuous tastes. Brilliant articles of jewellery; gay cloaks, worked with wampum, in Indian taste; ornamental turning, and costly weapons, inlaid with gold and silver, succeeded each other, street after street; and the very sight of them, however pleasurable to the eye, set me a-moralising in a strain that would have done credit to a son of Geneva. It might have been that, in my enthusiasm, I uttered half aloud what I intended for soliloquy; or perhaps some gesture, or peculiarity of manner, had the effect; but so it was, I found myself an object of notice; and my queer-cut coat and wide hat, contrasting so strangely with my youthful appearance and slender make, drew many a criticism on me. ‘He ain’t a Quaker, that’s a fact,’ cried one, ‘for they don’t wear black.’ ‘He’s a down-easter--a horse-jockey chap, I’ll be bound,’ cried another. ‘They put on all manner of disguises and “masqueroonings.” I know ‘em!’ ‘He’s a calf preacher--a young bottle-nosed Gospeller,’ broke in a thick, short fellow, like the skipper of a merchant-ship. ‘Let’s have him out for a preachment.’ ‘Ay, you’re right,’ chimed in another. ‘I’ll get you a sugar hogshead in no time’; and away he ran on the mission.