LETTEE FEOM CHICAGO. 365 



fcot smoke all the while, and what would you have them 

 do when listening to your long-winded stories about 

 horses, and pedigrees, harnesses, and bits, if they have 

 nothing but a trumpery cigar to suck at ? Why didn't 

 you stop when you went through, and lay in a supply ? as 

 I have no doubt we have all suffered from their taking 

 you for a specimen of Western horsemen. Mind, they do 

 not know you, and will ascribe to penuriousness what 

 your friends are aware is only absence of mind, and not 

 thinking of the wants of others. You talk about the com- 

 fort of smoking, and the fine sights you see when the 

 cloud is curling above your nostrils. Arrah na boclish, 

 man ! there is more comfort in a whiskey punch of a cold 

 night, and more fine imaginings in a dozen of them, than 

 there is in all the cigars in 48 Dearborn Street put to- 

 getfyer. I see you are likely to get acquainted with Mr 

 P. I know he is of the real sort ; and I will be wonder- 

 fully disappointed if he gets there before you have some 

 thing to treat him decently with. Tell him that sherry 

 has been in the wood for fifteen-years, and that I bottled 

 the port myself the same length of time ago. It is now 

 just ripe, and he must on no account leave a bottle, as ifc 

 will never be as good again. Tell the old man not to be 

 vexed, that I have sent a basket of champagne for Misses 

 Jane and Susan ; and I believe you would have been 

 omadhaun enough to have gone to the races at Jerome 

 Park with them, and never have thought of clapping a 

 few bottles in the carriage. The poetry of motion, as you 

 call it, in seeing a half score of thoroughbreds rattling 

 over a dirty track is rather a dry sight ; about as bad as 

 smoking with only tasteless water to wash out the gout. 

 If you had only seen the field after the Galway hounds, 

 or witnessed a steeple-chase with the Montgomery's, Lord 

 Howth, and the dirty blackguard Tom Ferguson in it, ! such 

 a skrimmage at the finish, and such a shouting as you 



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