All was strange to us; even the table-cloths on the tea and breakfast tables instead of napkins under the plates as we had at home, and which always looked so pretty on the mahogany. But the novelty having worn off after awhile, we found out there was a good deal of "imitation," after all, mixed up in everything. Things did not seem to have been "fixed up" to last as long as our old things at home, and we began to wonder if the "advanced age" really made the people any better, or more agreeable, or more hospitable, or more generous, or more brave, or more self-reliant, or more charitable, or more true, or more pious, than in "old fogy Virginia?" There was one thing most curious to us in New York. No one seemed to do anything by himself or herself. No one had an individuality; all existed in "clubs" or "societies." They had also many "isms" of which we had never heard; some of the people sitting up all night, and going around all day talking about "manifestations," and "spirits," and "affinities," which they told us was "spiritualism." All this impressed us slow, old fashioned Virginians, as a strangely up-side-down, wrong-side-out condition of things. Much of the conversation we heard was confined to asking questions of strangers, and discussing the best means of making money. We were surprised too to hear of "plantation customs" said to exist among us which were entirely new to us; and one of the Magazines published in the city informed us that "dipping" was one of the "characteristics" of Southern women. What could the word "dipping" mean? we wondered, for we had never heard it before. Upon inquiry we found that it meant "rubbing the teeth with snuff on a small stick"--a truly disgusting habit which could not have prevailed in Virginia, or we would have had some tradition of it at least--our acquaintance extending over the State, and our ancestors having settled there two hundred years ago. A young gentleman from Virginia--bright and overflowing with fun, also visiting New York--coming into the parlor one day threw himself on a sofa in a violent fit of laughter. "What is the matter?" we asked. "I am laughing," he replied, "at the absurd questions these people can ask. What do you think? A man asked me just now if we didn't keep blood-hounds in Virginia to chase negroes! I told him, O, yes, every plantation keeps several dozen! And we often have a tender boiled negro infant for breakfast!" "Oh, how could you have told such a story?" we said. "Well," said he, "you know we never saw a blood-hound in Virginia, and I do not expect there is one in the State; but these people delight in believing everything horrible about us, and I thought I might as well gratify them with something marvelous. So the next book published up here will have, I've no doubt, a chapter headed: 'Blood-hounds in Virginia and boiled negroes for breakfast!'"