met," with three or four idle, profane, drinking customers,
contradicted that assertion.

After supper, I took a seat in the bar-room, to see how life moved
on in that place of rendezvous for the surface-population of
Cedarville. Interest enough in the characters I had met there a
year before remained for me to choose this way of spending the
time, instead of visiting at the house of a gentleman who had
kindly invited me to pass an evening with his family.

The bar-room custom, I soon found, had largely increased in a
year. It now required, for a good part of the time, the active
services of both the landlord and his son to meet the calls for
liquor. What pained me most, was to see the large number of lads
and young men who came in to lounge and drink; and there was
scarcely one of them whose face did not show marks of sensuality,
or whose language was not marred by obscenity, profanity, or
vulgar slang. The subjects of conversation were varied enough,
though politics was the most prominent. In regard to politics I
heard nothing in the least instructive; but only abuse of
individuals and dogmatism on public measures. They were all
exceedingly confident in assertion; but I listened in vain for
exposition, or even for demonstrative facts. He who asseverated in
the most positive manner, and swore the hardest, carried the day
in the petty contests.

I noticed, early in the evening, and at a time when all the
inmates of the room were in the best possible humor with
themselves, the entrance of an elderly man, on whose face I
instantly read a deep concern. It was one of those mild, yet