Dinner was ready the instant we opened the front door.  I expected as much; I knew the pale, speechless woman who sat at the head of your table would make sure of punctuality, if she died for it.  We took our seats without a word.  The party was smaller than at breakfast.  Two of the children had staid at school, having their luncheon-baskets well filled from the cold remains of breakfast.  Your eldest girl, Angelina, aged ten, one of those premature little grown women who have learned from the cradle that man is born to eat pastry and woman to make it, postponed her small repast till an indefinite future, and sat meekly ready to attend upon our wants.  Nathaniel, a thin boy of eight, also partook but slightly, having impaired his appetite, his mother suspected, by a copious luncheon of cold baked beans and vinegar, on his return from school.  The two youngest (twins) had relapsed to their couches soon after breakfast, in consequence of excess of sausage.

You were quite agreeable in conversation, I remember, after the first onset of appetite was checked.  You gave me your whole theory of the indigo crisis, with minute details, statistical and geographical, of the financial condition and supposed present location of your principal absconding debtors.  This served for what is called, at public dinners, the intellectual feast; while the carnal appetite was satisfied with fried pork, ditto roasted, strong coffee, turnips, potatoes, and a good deal of gravy.  For dessert, (at which point Nathaniel regained his appetite,) we had mince-pie, apple-pie, and lemon-pie, the latter being a structure of a two-story description, an additional staging of crust being somehow inserted between upper and under.  We lingered long at that noon meal,—­fifteen minutes, at the very least; for you hospitably said that you did not have these little social festivals very often,—­owing to frequent illness in the family, and other causes,—­and mast make the most of it.

I did not see much of you during that afternoon; it was a magnificent day, and I said, that, being a visitor, I would look about and see the new buildings.  The truth was, I felt a sneaking desire to witness the match-game on the Common, between the Union Base-Ball Club, No. 1, of Ward Eleven, and the Excelsiors of Smithville.  I remember that you looked a little dissatisfied, when I came into the counting-room, and rather shook your head over my narrative (perhaps too impassioned) of the events of the game.  “Those young fellows,” said you, “may not all be shiftless, dissipated characters, yet,—­but see what it comes to!  They a’n’t content with wasting their time,—­they kill it, Sir, actually kill it!” When I thought of the manly figures and handsome, eager faces of my friends of the “Union” and the “Excelsior,”—­the Excelsiors won by ten tallies, I should say, the return match to come off at Smithville the next month,—­and then looked at the meagre form and wan countenance of their critic, I thought to myself, “Dolorosus, my boy, you are killing something besides Time, if you only knew it.”