In the moonlight and the music Xtopher and I are but "Such stuff as dreams are made of," until "From tower or tree-top high, The sentry elf his call has made, A streak is in the eastern sky, Shapes of moonlight flit and fade! II. CATSKILL. THE MOUNTAIN HOUSE. JULY. THE " New World" is a fillagree frame-work of white wood surrounding a huge engine, which is much too conspicuous. I am speaking, by-the-bye, of the Hudson steamer; and yet, perhaps, the symbol holds for the characteristic expression of the nation. For just as flimsy and over-fine are our social arrangements, our peculiarities of manner and dress, and just so prominent and evident is the homely practical genius that carries us forward, with steam speed, through the sloop-sluggishness of our compeers. A sharp-faced, thought-furrowed, hard-handed American, with his anxious eye and sallow complexion, his nervous motion and concentrated expression, and withal accoutred for travelling in blue over-coat with gilt buttons, dark pantaloons, patent leather boots, and silk vest hung with charms, chains, and bits of metal, as if the Indian love of lustre lingered in the Yankee, is not unlike one of these steamers, whose machinery, driving it along, jars the cut glass and the choice centre-tables and crimson-covered lounges, and with a like accelerated impetus would shiver the fillagree into splinters. Yet for all this the "New World" is a very pleasant place. It has a light, airy, open, and clean deck, whence you may spy the shyest nook of scenery upon the banks and a spacious cabin, where you do not dine at a huge table, with eager men plunging their forks into dishes before you, and their elbows into your sides, but quietly and pleasantly as at a Parisian café. What an appalling ordeal an American table d'hôte is!What a chaos of pickles, puddings, and meats!-and each man plunging through everything as if he and the steamer were racing for victory. The waiters, usually of one-third the necessary number, rush up and down the rear of the benches, and cascades of gravies and sauces drip ominously along their wake. It is the seed-time of dyspepsia; and Dickens, in that anti-American novel which none of us can read without feeling its injustice, has yet described, only too well, an American ordinary. Who can wonder that we are lantern-jawed, lean, sickly, and serious of aspect, when he has dined on a steamer or at a great business hotel? We laugh very |