I never saw turbot, salmon, or fresh cod; but the rock and shad are excellent.  There is a great want of skill in the composition of sauces; not only with fish, but with every thing.  They use very few made dishes, and I never saw any that would be approved by our savants.  They have an excellent wild duck, called the Canvass Back, which, if delicately served, would surpass the black cock; but the game is very inferior to our’s; they have no hares, and I never saw a pheasant.  They seldom indulge in second courses, with all their ingenious temptations to the eating a second dinner; but almost every table has its dessert, (invariably pronounced desart) which is placed on the table before the cloth is removed, and consists of pastry, preserved fruits, and creams.  They are “extravagantly fond,” to use their own phrase, of puddings, pies, and all kinds of “sweets,” particularly the ladies; but are by no means such connoisseurs in soups and ragouts as the gastronomes of Europe.  Almost every one drinks water at table, and by a strange contradiction, in the country where hard drinking is more prevalent than in any other, there is less wine taken at dinner; ladies rarely exceed one glass, and the great majority of females never take any.  In fact, the hard drinking, so universally acknowledged, does not take place at jovial dinners, but, to speak plain English, in solitary dram-drinking.  Coffee is not served immediately after dinner, but makes part of the serious matter of tea-drinking, which comes some hours later.  Mixed dinner parties of ladies and gentlemen are very rare, and unless several foreigners are present, but little conversation passes at table.  It certainly does not, in my opinion, add to the well ordering a dinner table, to set the gentlemen at one end of it, and the ladies at the other; but it is very rarely that you find it otherwise.

Their large evening parties are supremely dull; the men sometimes play cards by themselves, but if a lady plays, it must not be for money; no ecarte, no chess; very little music, and that little lamentably bad.  Among the blacks, I heard some good voices, singing in tune; but I scarcely ever heard a white American, male or female, go through an air without being out of tune before the end of it; nor did I ever meet any trace of science in the singing I heard in society.  To eat inconceivable quantities of cake, ice, and pickled oysters—­and to show half their revenue in silks and satins, seem to be the chief object they have in these parties.

The most agreeable meetings, I was assured by all the young people, were those to which no married women are admitted; of the truth of this statement I have not the least doubt.  These exclusive meetings occur frequently, and often last to a late hour; on these occasions, I believe, they generally dance.  At regular balls, married ladies are admitted, but seldom take much part in the amusement.  The refreshments are always profuse and costly, but taken in a most uncomfortable manner.  I have known many private balls, where every thing was on the most liberal scale of expense, where the gentlemen sat down to supper in one room, while the ladies took theirs, standing, in another.