“I don’t,” said Halicarnassus, rubbing his eyes.

“I only wish,” I added, “that she would turn Rebel, so that Government might confiscate her.  Paper currency would go up at once from the sudden influx of gold, and the credit of the country receive a new lease of life.  She must be a lineal descendant of Sir Roger de Coverley, for I am sure her finger sparkles with a hundred of his richest acres.”

Before bidding a final farewell to New York, I shall venture to make a single remark.  I regret to be forced to confess that I greatly fear even this virtuous little city has not escaped quite free, in the general deterioration of morals and manners.  The New York hackmen, for instance, are very obliging and attentive; but if it would not seem ungrateful, I would hazard the statement that their attentions are unremitting to the degree of being almost embarrassing, and proffered to the verge of obtrusiveness.  I think, in short, that they are hardly quite delicate in their politeness.  They press their hospitality on you till you sigh for a little marked neglect.  They are not content with simple statement.  They offer you their hack, for instance.  You decline, with thanks.  They say that they will carry you to any part of the city.  Where is the pertinence of that, if you do not wish to go?  But they not only say it, they repeat it, they dwell upon it as if it were a cardinal virtue.  Now you have never expressed or entertained the remotest suspicion that they would not carry you to any part of the city.  You have not the slightest intention or desire to discredit their assertion.  The only trouble is, as I said before, you do not wish to go to any part of the city.  Very few people have the time to drive about in that general way; and I think, that, when you have once distinctly informed them that you do not design to inspect New York, they ought to see plainly that you cannot change your whole plan of operations out of gratitude to them, and that the part of true politeness is to withdraw.  But they even go beyond a censurable urgency; for an old gentleman and lady, evidently unaccustomed to travelling, had given themselves in charge of a driver, who placed them in his coach, leaving the door open while he went back seeking whom he might devour.  Presently a rival coachman came up and said to the aged and respectable couple,—­

“Here’s a carriage all ready to start.”

“But,” replied the lady, “we have already told the gentleman who drives this coach that we would go with him.”

“Catch me to go in that coach, if I was you!” responded the wicked coachman.  “Why, that coach has had the small-pox in it.”

The lady started up in horror.  At that moment the first driver appeared again, and Satan entered into me, and I felt in my heart that I should like to see a fight; and then conscience stepped up and drove him away, but consoled me by the assurance that I should see the fight all the same, for such duplicity deserved the severest punishment, and it was my duty to make an expose and vindicate helpless innocence imposed upon in the persons of that worthy pair.  Accordingly I said to the driver, as he passed me,—­