persuade himself (as I once did to my shame) that previous tourists have exaggerated its extent. The thing itself is an exaggeration of nastiness which cannot be outdone. “On board the steamboat there were two young gentlemen, with shirt collars reversed, as usual, and armed with very big walking sticks, who planted two seats in the middle of the deck, at a distance of some four paces apart, took out their tobacco boxes, and sat down opposite each other to chew. In less than a quarter of an hour’s time, these hopeful youths had shed about them on the clean boards, a copious shower of yellow rain, clearing by that means a kind of magic circle, within whose limits no intruders dared to come, and which they never failed to refresh and refresh before a spot was dry. This being before breakfast, rather disposed me, I confess, to nausea; but looking attentively at one of the expectorators, I plainly saw that he was young at chewing, and felt inwardly uneasy himself. A glow of delight came over me at this discovery, and as I marked his face turn paler and paler, and saw the ball of tobacco in his left cheek quiver with his suppressed agony, while yet he spat and chewed, and spat again, in emulation of his older friend, I could have fallen on his neck and implored him to go on for hours. “The senate is a dignified and decorous body, and its proceedings are conducted with much gravity and order. Both houses are handsomely carpetted; but the state to which these carpets are reduced by the universal disregard of the spittoon, with which every honorable member is accommodated, and the extraordinary improvements on the pattern which are squirted and dabbled upon it in every direction, do not admit of being described. I will merely observe, that I strongly recommend all strangers not to look at the floor; and if they happen to drop anything, though it be their purse, not to pick it up with an ungloved hand on any account. It is somewhat remarkable, too, to see so many honorable members with swelled faces; and it is scarcely less remarkable to discover, that this appearance is caused by the quantity of tobacco they contrive to stow within the hollow of the cheek. It is strange enough, too, to see an honorable gentleman leaning back in his tilted chair, with his legs on the desk before him, shaping a convenient ‘plug’ with his penknife, and when it is quite ready for use, shooting the old one from his mouth as from a pop-gun, and clapping the new one in its place. I was surprised to observe, that even steady old chewers of great experience are not always good marksmen, which has rather inclined me to doubt that general proficiency with the rifle of which we have heard so much in England. Several gentlemen called upon me, who, in the course of conversation, frequently missed the spittoon at five paces; and one (but he was certainly short-sighted) mistook the closed sash for the open window at three. On another occasion when I dined out, and was sitting with