The most common mode of conversation in America I should distinguish as prosy, but withal rich and droll. For some weeks, I found it difficult to keep awake during the entire reply to any question I happened to ask. The person questioned seemed to feel himself put upon his conscience to give a full, true, and particular reply; and so he went back as near to the Deluge as the subject would admit, and forward to the millennium, taking care to omit nothing of consequence in the interval. There was, of course, one here and there, as there is everywhere, to tell me precisely what I knew before, and omit what I most wanted: but this did not happen often: and I presently found the information I obtained in conversation so full, impartial, and accurate, and the shrewdness and drollery with which it was conveyed so amusing, that I became a great admirer of the American way of talking before six months were over. Previous to that time, a gentleman in the same house with me expressed pleasantly his surprise at my asking so few questions: saying that if he came to England, he should be asking questions all day long. I told him that there was no need of my seeking information as long as more was given me in the course of the day than my head would carry. I did not tell him that I had not power of attention sufficient for such information as came in answer to my own desire. I can scarcely believe now that I ever felt such a difficulty. They themselves are, however, aware of their tendency to length, and also to something of the literal dulness which Charles Lamb complains of in relation to the Scotch. They have stories of American travellers which exceed all I ever heard of them anywhere else: such as that an American gentleman, returned from Europe, was asked how he liked Rome: to which he replied that Rome was a fine city; but that he must acknowledge he thought the public buildings were very much out of repair. Again, it is told against a lady that she made some undeniably true remarks on a sermon she heard. A preacher, discoursing on the blindness of men to the future, remarked "how few men, in building a house, consider that a coffin is to go down the stairs!" The lady observed with much emphasis, on coming out, that ministers had got into the strangest way of choosing subjects for the pulpit! It was true that wide staircases _are_ a great convenience: but she did think Christian ministers might find better subjects to preach upon than narrow staircases. And so forth. An eminent Senator told me that he was too often on the one horn or the other of a dilemma: sometimes a gentleman getting up in the Senate, and talking as if he would never sit down: and sometimes a gentleman sitting down in his study, and talking as if he would never get up.