In the social life of these places, where rough hospitality is often curiously mingled with a strain of former luxury, incidents of a humorous character will sometimes attract the notice of the visitor. I remember being told by an acquaintance about a visit once made by him to the family of an English gentleman, who had settled upon a small clearing in the depth of the forest. The young men of the family were engaged in burning brushwood when my informant arrived, and he, anxious to win their approbation, set to work with a will, and toiled with them until the distant horn announced that dinner-time had arrived. Ablution became necessary before the visitor, who by this time was as black as a charcoal-burner, could venture to greet the ladies of the household, and pails of water were accordingly furnished hard by the gable end of the house. There was no towel visible, however, and the visitor, with his hands and face dripping from recent immersion, was pained to see that some difficulty had arisen out of his request for one. Then, with sudden impulse, one of the young men went away, and returned in a minute or two with a long and richly embroidered scarf, the golden web interwoven with which, as well as the deep lace border, stamped it as a tissue of price. Assured by the young men that this brocade was inured to duty as the regular family towel, the visitor made use of it as such. The texture of it, as he told me, was not pleasant to the face, and it abraded a good deal of the skin from his nose. It went the rounds after he had used it, and the party adjourned to the dinner-table, where some remark was made as to the non-appearance of the daughter of the house. Presently that young lady entered, however, and took her place at the dinner-table. She had evidently bestowed some extra care upon her toilet in honor of the guest from beyond the "timber limits"; but what chiefly attracted his notice in her costume was a curious, gold-embroidered scarf, with deep lace edges, the folds of which, although artfully cast, revealed here and there the smudges of soiled hands. Indeed, my informant--who was a little given to exaggeration, perhaps--used to aver that he recognized upon the mystic garment, just at the point where it was crossed upon the bosom of the lovely sylvan damsel, a portion of the cuticle of his own Roman nose.