"Everything they could do to go counter to the habits and prejudices of the people among whom they were, and to show their contempt of American society; to act, in short, as if they were among uncivilized people. For instance, it is a custom at these watering-place hotels to dress for the _table-d'hôte_. Now, I do not think it altogether reasonable that a man should be expected to make his evening toilet by three in the afternoon, and, indeed, I do not strictly conform to the rule myself. But these men came in with flannel shirts and dirty shoes, and altogether in a state unfit for ladies' company. Perhaps, however, we were too fastidious in this. But what do you say to a youngster's seating himself upon a piano in the public parlor, while a lady is playing on it?" Ashburner allowed that it was rather unceremonious. "By various similar acts, trivial, perhaps, individually, but forming a very disagreeable aggregate, these young men made themselves so unpopular that one season the ladies, by common consent, refused to dance with any of them. But there is worse behind. These gentlemen, so stupid in a drawing-room, are sharp enough in borrowing money, and altogether oblivious of repaying it." Ashburner remembered the affair of Ensign Lawless, and made up his mind to undergo another repetition of it. "I don't speak of my individual case, the thing has happened fifty times. I could tell of a dozen friends who have been victimized in this way during the last three years. In fact, I believe that your _jeunes militaires_ have formed a league to avenge the Mississippi bondholders, and recover their lost money under the form of these nominal loans. You may think it poetic justice, but we New Yorkers have no fancy to pay the Mississippians' debts in this way." It would be foreign to our present purpose to accompany Ashburner in his Northwestern and Canadian tour. Suffice it to say, that he returned by the first of August, very much pleased, having seen many things well worth seeing, and experienced no particular annoyance, except the one predicted by Benson, that he sometimes _had to take care of his servant_. Neither shall we say much of his visit to Ravenswood, where, indeed, he only spent a few hours, arriving there in the morning and leaving it in the afternoon of the same day, and had merely time to partake of a capital lunch, and to remark that his entertainer had a beautiful place and a handsome wife, and was something like his younger brother, but more resembling an Englishman than any American he had yet seen.