as Lydia Wright said, "How could a young lady die for a young gentleman
with ashes all over his waistcoat?"

However, when Alfred Price fell in love with Miss Letty Morris, he was
not indifferent to his waistcoat, nor did he weigh two hundred pounds.
He was slender and ruddy-cheeked, with tossing red-brown curls. If he
swore, it was not by his grandmother nor her nightcap; if he drank, it
was hard cider (which can often accomplish as much as "rum"); if he
smoked, it was in secret, behind the stable. He wore a stock, and (on
Sunday) a ruffled shirt; a high-waisted coat with two brass buttons
behind, and very tight pantaloons. At that time he attended the Seminary
for Youths in Upper Chester. Upper Chester was then, as in our time, the
seat of learning in the township, the Female Academy being there, too.
Both were boarding-schools, but the young people came home to spend
Sunday; and their weekly returns, all together in the stage, were
responsible for more than one Old Chester match....

"The air," says Miss, sniffing genteelly as the coach jolts past the
blossoming May orchards, "is most agreeably perfumed. And how fair is
the prospect from this hilltop!"

"Fair indeed!" responded her companion, staring boldly.

Miss bridles and bites her lip.

"_I_ was not observing the landscape," the other explains, carefully.

In those days (Miss Letty was born in 1804, and was eighteen when she
and the ruddy Alfred sat on the back seat of the coach)--in those days
the conversation of Old Chester youth was more elegant than in our time.