would be in no wise appeased by listening to the steady, pattering
drone of Mr. Dorrance's oration. Oratorical he was to a degree that
excited the secret amusement of the facile Southern youths about
him. With them, the art of light conversation had been a study from
boyhood, the topics suitable for and pleasing to ladies' ears
carefully culled and adroitly handled. To amuse and entertain was
their main object. Erudite dissertations upon science and
literature; abstruse arguments--whatever resembled a moral thesis,
a political, religious, or philosophical lecture met with the sure
ban of ridicule from them, as from the fair whose devoted cavaliers
they were. If they laughed, when it was safe and not impolitic to do
so, at the ponderous elocution of the Northern barrister, they
marvelled exceedingly more at Mabel's indulgence of his attentions.
That a girl, who, in virtue of her snug fortune and attractive face,
her blood and her breeding, might, as they put it, have the "pick of
the county," if she wanted a husband, should lend a willing ear to
the pompous platitudes, the heavy rolling periods of this alien to
her native State--a man without grace of manner or beauty--in their
nomenclature, "a solemn prig," defied all ingenuity of explanation,
was an increasing wonder outlasting the prescribed nine days. He
rode with the ill assurance of one who, accustomed to the sawdust
floor, treadmill round, and enclosing walls of a city riding-school,
was bewildered by the unequal roads and free air of the breezy
country. He talked learnedly of hunting, quoting written authorities
upon this or that point, of whom the unenlightened Virginians had
never heard, much less read; equipped himself for the sport in a
bewildering arsenal of new-fangled guns, game-bags, shot-pouches,
and powder-horns, with numerous belts, diagonal, perpendicular, and
horizontal, and in the field carried his gun a la Winkle; never, by
any happy accident, brought down his bird, but was continually