I omitted, at the proper time, to describe the scene we witnessed at our “private” lodgings the first day we sat down to dinner.  Though it was called a “private” boarding-house, and we had taken the apartments as such, we found ourselves surrounded by about thirty boarders!  These were all respectable men, or rather men whom, from their position in society, you would expect to be respectable.  Doctors, lieutenants in the army, captains, merchants, editors, clerks of the senate, and so forth, were among them.  My wife was the only lady besides the mistress of the house.

We were all waiting in an ante-room for the summons to dinner.  It came.  The door of the dining-room was thrown open; and before you could have said “Jack Robinson,” the whole had rushed through, were seated at table, and sending forth a forest of forks in the direction of the various dishes!  I had often heard of this wolfish habit, but thought our cousins were caricatured.  Here, however, was the reality.  Had I not been an eye-witness, I could not have believed it.  Not a single seat had been kept vacant for the only lady who had to be accommodated, and we were both left to console ourselves in the ante-room!  The landlady, however, having “an eye to business,” arranged for our accommodation at the table.  There had been on the table a turkey, a piece of beef, some fish, and pastry,—­all ready carved.  Most of these things had instantly disappeared,—­the knives and forks had borne them away in triumph.  There was no waiting to be served:  every one stuck his fork in what he liked best, or what was most within his reach.  It was a regular scramble.  The principle seemed to be to begin to eat as soon as possible, no matter what!  Some began with nothing but potatoes, some with a bit of bread, some with a piece of beef, some with a limb of the turkey.  Some, I noticed, beginning with fowl, then taking roast beef, then boiled mutton, then fish, and then some pastry,—­all on the same plate, and—­faugh!—­portions of most of them there at the same time!  No change of plate,—­that would have been extravagant, and would have savoured of aristocracy.  Freedom, it seemed, allowed every one to help himself; and that with his own knife and fork, which he had before used for all sorts of purposes.  Such luxuries as salt-spoons and mustard-spoons are very rare south of the Ohio.  My wife asked the lady of the house for a small slice of the ham she had before her, when the latter very politely begged Mrs. Davies to lend her her knife to cut it with!  This was good society in New Orleans.  Things improved as we advanced towards the North; but in most places, though the Americans provide bountifully, the cooking is not good, and they make a strange jumble of things at table.  They have the appearance of a people suddenly raised in the world, and able to afford themselves nice things, but very ignorant and awkward in the use of them.  With so much hurry to begin, the time occupied in