YANKEE-DOODLE 197 



cellar to please any man. Our Dickens told the plain truth 

 when he described cousin Jonathan as feeding much like 

 a hog. One of themselves laughingly said that it was a 

 standing joke in his city that a man rushed into an eating- 

 saloon, hung up his hat, and before it had ceased to swing 

 on the nail, had bolted his dinner, and was ready to go 

 back to business. Now, to my thinking, eating and 

 drinking is one of the chief businesses of life ; and I 

 willingly open this weak point to Mr. Critic. Laugh, 

 joke, sneer as you will, I am convinced that the reason, 

 now I am getting old and grey, after a life of excessive 

 hardship, that I have still a hard fist and a jovial temper 

 is, that I have paid a proper respect to the gentleman 

 who has kept my arms and legs going. I do not allow 

 him to be hurried over his work, or to be stinted, or 

 abused, in any form. He has his hour to breakfast, his 

 hour to dinner, and his hour to supper, less not one minute, 

 on any account whatever. 



Board is very cheap, or was in my time, in most parts 

 of the States, as well it might be when the boy or girl 

 wished to clear the table by the time I had swallowed two 

 ounces. On this and other accounts I never could endure 

 life in an American town, and I suppose no man ever spent 

 so long a time in the States as I have done and knew less 

 about its big cities. Seriously, I think that the haste with 

 which food is eaten, the number of hot cakes and sweets, 

 and the everlasting iced drinks, cocktails, and mint juleps, 

 are the cause, in great measure, of the dyspepsia and bowel 

 complaints to which Americans are so subject. 



A public lecturer in London is reported to have said 

 some time ago that gentlemen in America lived in a 

 perfect fever of hasty business, and the ladies in — clover. 

 He is quite right. The Yankee is an unqualified idiot over 

 his womankind. The only time he idles is when he is 

 listening, with a silly smirk on his face, to the bombastic 

 gush of his wife. There her ladyship sits, rocking to and 

 fro, and displaying her elaborate tucks and frills, and a 



