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worn out by the very precautions taken for its preservation.

3. The whole house was constantly in a state of inundation, under the discipline of mops and brooms and scrubbing brushes; and the good housewives of those days were a kind of amphibious animal, delighting exceedingly to be dabbling in water, insomuch that an historian of the day gravely tells us that many of his townswomen grew to have webbed fingers, "like unto a duck."

4. The grand parlor was the sanctum sanctorum, where the passion for cleaning was indulged without control. No one was permitted to enter this sacred apartment, except the mistress and her confidential maid, who visited it once a week for the purpose of giving it a thorough cleaning. On these occasions they always took the precaution of leaving their shoes at the door, and entering devoutly in their stocking-feet.

5. After scrubbing the floor, sprinkling it with fine white sand, which was curiously stroked with a broom into angles and curves and rhomboids, - after washing the windows, rubbing and polishing the furniture, and putting a new branch of evergreens in the fireplace the windows were again closed to keep out the flies, and the room was kept carefully locked, until the revolution of time brought round the weekly cleaning day.

6. As to the family, they always entered in at the gate, and generally lived in the kitchen. To have

seen a numerous household assembled round the fire, one would have imagined that he was transported to those happy days of primeval simplicity which float before our imaginations like golden visions.

7. The fireplaces were of a truly patriarchal magnitude, where the whole family, old and young, master and servant, black and white,-nay, even the very cat and dog, — enjoyed a community of privilege, and had each a right to a corner.

8. Here the old burgher would sit in perfect silence, puffing his pipe, looking in the fire, with half-shut eyes, and thinking of nothing, for hours together; the good wife, on the opposite side, would employ herself diligently in spinning yarn or knitting stockings. The young folks would crowd around the hearth, listening with breathless attention to some old crone of a negro, who was the oracle of the family, and who, perched like a raven in a corner of the chimney, would croak forth, for a long winter afternoon, a string of incredible stories about New England witches, grisly ghosts, horses without heads, hairbreadth escapes, and bloody encounters among Indians.

9. In these happy days, fashionable parties were generally confined to the higher classes, or noblesse; that is to say, such as kept their own cows, and drove their own wagons. The company usually assembled at three o'clock, and went away about six, unless it was in winter-time, when the fashionable hours were a little earlier, that the ladies might reach home before dark.

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10. The tea table was crowned with a huge earthen dish, well stored with slices of fat pork, fried brown, cut up into morsels, and swimming in gravy. The company, seated round the genial board, evinced their dexterity in launching their forks at the fattest pieces in this mighty dish,-in much the same manner that

sailors harpoon porpoises at sea, or our Indians spear salmon in the lakes.

11. Sometimes the table was graced with immense apple pies, or saucers full of preserved peaches and pears; but it was always sure to boast an enormous dish of balls of sweetened dough, fried in hog's fat, and called doughnuts or olykoeks, a delicious kind of cake, at present little known in this city, except in genuine Dutch families.

12. The tea was served out of a majestic Delft teapot, ornamented with paintings of fat little Dutch shepherds and shepherdesses tending pigs,—with boats sailing in the air, and houses built in the clouds, and · sundry other ingenious Dutch fancies. The beaux distinguished themselves by their adroitness in replenishing this pot from a huge copper teakettle.

13. To sweeten the beverage, a lump of sugar was laid beside each cup, and the company alternately nibbled and sipped with great decorum; until an improvement was introduced by a shrewd and economic old lady, which was to suspend, by a string from the ceiling, a large lump directly over the tea table, so that it could be swung from mouth to mouth.

14. At these primitive tea parties, the utmost propriety and dignity prevailed, no flirting nor coquetting; no romping of young ladies; no self-satisfied struttings of wealthy gentlemen, with their brains in their pockets; no amusing conceits of smart young gentlemen with no brains at all.

15. On the contrary, the young ladies seated them. selves demurely in their rush-bottomed chairs, and knit their own woolen stockings; nor ever opened their lips, excepting to say yah, Mynheer, or yah, yah, Vrouw, to any question that was asked them. The parties broke up without noise or confusion. The guests were carried home by their own carriages; that is to say, by the vehicles nature had provided them, excepting such of the wealthy as could afford to keep a wagon.

16. The gentlemen gallantly attended their fair ones to their respective abodes, and took leave of them with a hearty smack at the door; which, as it was an established piece of etiquette, done in perfect simplicity and honesty of heart, occasioned no scandal at that time, nor should it at the present. If our great-grandfathers approved of the custom, it would argue a great want of reverence in their descendants to say a word against it.

LANGUAGE STUDY.

I. Write the analysis of: universal (vertere); diversions (vertere); permit (mittere); vision (videre); incredible (credere).

Give synonyms of: ornamented; burnished; permitted; magnitude ; dexterity; beverage.

II. In paragraph 4 are two complex sentences: which are they? Analyze the second sentence in paragraph 8.

III. No bright scholar can fail to appreciate the humor and drollery of this sketch. Note such touches as the burnishing of the knocker with "religious zeal" (2); the house being in a state of "inundation" (3); the burlesque in paragraph 5 in comparing a small event with the revolution of the heavenly bodies, etc.

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