While she was absent a lady called on me, and enquired, with some agitation, if my servant, Nancy Fletcher, were at home.  I replied that she was gone into the country.  “Thank God,” she exclaimed, “never let her enter your doors again, she is the most abandoned woman in the town:  a gentleman who knows you, has been told that she lives with you, and that she boasts of having the power of entering your house at any hour of night.”  She told me many other circumstances, unnecessary to repeat, but all tending to prove that she was a very dangerous inmate.

I expected her home the next evening, and I believe I passed the interval in meditating how to get rid of her without an eclaircissement.  At length she arrived, and all my study having failed to supply me with any other reason than the real one for dismissing her, I stated it at once.  Not the slightest change passed over her countenance, but she looked steadily at me, and said, in a very civil tone, “I should like to know who told you.”  I replied that it could be of no advantage to her to know, and that I wished her to go immediately.  “I am ready to go,” she said, in the same quiet tone, “but what will you do for your three dollars?” “I must do without them, Nancy; good morning to you.”  “I must just put up my things,” she said, and left the room.  About half an hour afterwards, when we were all assembled at dinner, she entered with her usual civil composed air, “Well, I am come to wish you all goodbye,” and with a friendly good-humoured smile she left us.

This adventure frightened me so heartily, that, notwithstanding I had the dread of cooking my own dinner before my eyes, I would not take any more young ladies into my family without receiving some slight sketch of their former history.  At length I met with a very worthy French woman, and soon after with a tidy English girl to assist her; and I had the good fortune to keep them till a short time before my departure:  so, happily, I have no more misfortunes of this nature to relate.

Such being the difficulties respecting domestic arrangements, it is obvious, that the ladies who are brought up amongst them cannot have leisure for any great development of the mind:  it is, in fact, out of the question; and, remembering this, it is more surprising that some among them should be very pleasing, than that none should be highly instructed.

Had I passed as many evenings in company in any other town that I ever visited as I did in Cincinnati, I should have been able to give some little account of the conversations I had listened to; but, upon reading over my notes, and then taxing my memory to the utmost to supply the deficiency, I can scarcely find a trace of any thing that deserves the name.  Such as I have, shall be given in their place.  But, whatever may be the talents of the persons who meet together in society, the very shape, form, and arrangement of the meeting is sufficient to paralyze