“No, indeed,” said Archibald; “here is plenty to eat and drink, but nothing eatable or drinkable. In matters appertaining to the table, you are a century and a half behind us in town. I can no more live upon your dishes than I could wear my grandfather's breeches, or old Sir Geoffry's greaves for gaiters. You keep up a custom of dining at two o'clock,--and I don't care a farthing for dinner till five, at the very earliest moment The post of honour in the parlour, at breakfast-time, is occupied by a huge, blear-eyed, irascible, old stag-hound, instead of an agreeable woman; and there he lies, dreaming of following the stag, where she ought to be sitting, all smiles and sweetness, asking a man if he'd take half a cup more. But night is worse than all; it's so awfully silent, that I can't sleep!--In fact, brother Waldron, although you have done all in your power to make me comfortable,--to speak the plain truth,--when the novelty of the thing wore off when there was nothing more left to laugh at,--in other words, within twenty-four hours after my arrival, I began to sigh for a lunch at the'counting-house, sent in hot from the Cock in Threadneedle Street, and a draught of London porter, again. I feel as though I was in a strange country; I can't understand two-thirds of what the people say. With the assistance of my man,--whom I brought down, not out of ostentation, but because I can't shave myself and entertain a mortal fear of a country barber,--'I have to-day discovered, that meat, in the dialect of these parts, means bread, butter, and almost everything eatable but meat; and meat they call flesh!--He had a quarrel with a farmer's son, last night, who threatened to 'scat him down upon the planchin;' and shortly afterwards tripped up his heels: so that, thank heaven! if any one, while I remain here, threatens to scat me down upon the planchm, I shall know, that nothing but my legs can save me from being transferred from a perpendicular to a horizontal position. He tells me, too, that you make broth of hot water poured upon chopped leeks and bits of mutton-suet,--and that, in this country, broth is plural;--that they ask you to have _a few_, instead of some; and tempt you to take some, by vowing, that they--that is, the broth--_are_ cruel good.--Item, that when they blowed dust in your eyes, the bumpkins exclaim, 'How the pellam blaeth!' and that, upon one fellow being asked what he meant by 'pellam,' he replied, 'Muck adrouth.' 'And what's muck adrouth?' said the stranger. 'Why, pellam, to be zure,' replied the bumpkin; and this was all that could be elicited from him, in explanation. If I happen to mention anything metropolitan, which, in their sublime stupidity, they either do not comprehend or believe, they say, with roguish and provoking gravity, 'Ahem! quo' Dick Bates!' and then, if I manifest a little display of venial irritability at their ignorance, they tell me, that I'm 'all of a ruck, like Zekiel Hodder's boot!'--Now, who the deuce