I could not refrain from accompanying Marble's party to the museum. In that day, this was a somewhat insignificant collection of curiosities, in Greenwich Street, but it was a miracle to the aunt and niece. Even the worthy Manhattanese were not altogether guiltless of esteeming it a wonder, though the greater renown of the Philadelphia Museum kept this of New York a little in the shade. I have often had occasion to remark that, in this republic, the people in the country are a little less country, and the people of the towns a good deal less town, than is apt to be the case in great nations. The last is easily enough accounted for: the towns having shot up so rapidly, and receiving their accessions of population from classes not accustomed to town lives from childhood. Were a thousand villages to be compressed into a single group of houses, their people would long retain the notions, tastes and habits of villagers, though they would form a large town in the aggregate. Such, in a measure, is still the fact with our American towns; no one of them all having the air, tone or appearance of a capital, while most of them would be paragons in the eyes of such persons as old Mrs. Wetmore and her grand-daughter. Thus it was, that the Greenwich Street Museum gave infinite satisfaction to these two unsophisticated visitors. Kitty was most struck with certain villainous wax-figures, works of art that were much on a level with certain similar objects that were lately, if they are not now, exhibited for the benefit of the Dean and Chapter of Westminster Abbey, above the tombs of the Plantagenets, and almost in contact with that marvel of gothic art, Henry VII's. chapel! It is said that "misery makes a man acquainted with strange bed-fellows." So, it would seem, do shillings and sixpences. To return to Kitty: After admiring divers beauties, such as the New York Beauty, the South Carolina Beauty, and the Pennsylvania Beauty, she fastened her own pretty eyes on a nun, wondering who a female in such an attire could be. In 1803, a nun and a nunnery would be almost as great curiosities, in America, as a rhinoceros, though the country has since undergone some changes in this respect. "Grandmother," exclaimed Kitty, "who _can_ that lady be--it isn't _Lady_ Washington, is it?" "It looks more like a clergyman's wife, Kitty," answered the worthy Mrs. Wetmore, not a little '_non-plushed,_' herself, as she afterwards admitted. "I should think Madam Washington went more gaily dressed, and looked happier like. I'm sure if any woman could be happy, it was she!" "Ay," answered her son, "there is truth in that remark. This woman, here, is what is called a nun in the Roman Catholic quarters of the world." "A nun!" repeated little Kitty. "Isn't that the sort of woman that shuts herself up in a house, and promises never to get married, uncle?"