and cheese, and rag-carpets executed by ladies more than seventy years of
age; where whey wear dress-coats before dinner, and cock their hats on
one side when they feel conspicuous and distinshed; where they say--Sir
to you in their common talk and have other Arcadian and bucolic ways
which are highly unobjectionable, but are not so much admired in cities,
where the people are said to be not half so virtuous.

There is with us a boy of modest dimensions, not otherwise especially
entitled to the epithet, who ought be six or seven years old, to judge by
the gap left by his front milk teeth, these having resigned in favor of
their successors, who have not yet presented their credentials. He is
rather old for an enfant terrible, and quite too young to have grown into
the bashfulness of adolescence; but he has some of the qualities of both
these engaging periods of development, The member of the Haouse calls him
"Bub," invariably, such term I take to be an abbreviation of "Beelzeb,"
as "bus" is the short form of "omnibus." Many eminently genteel persons,
whose manners make them at home anywhere, being evidently unaware of true
derivation of this word, are in the habit of addressing all unknown
children by one of the two terms, "bub" and "sis," which they consider
endears them greatly to the young people, and recommends them to the
acquaintance of their honored parents, if these happen to accompany them.
The other boarders commonly call our diminutive companion That Boy. He
is a sort of expletive at the table, serving to stop gaps, taking the
same place a washer does that makes a loose screw fit, and contriving to
get driven in like a wedge between any two chairs where there is a
crevice. I shall not call that boy by the monosyllable referred to,
because, though he has many impish traits at present, he may become
civilized and humanized by being in good company. Besides, it is a term
which I understand is considered vulgar by the nobility and gentry of the
Mother Country, and it is not to be found in Mr. Worcester's Dictionary,