Page:Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home (Volume 1).djvu/80

Rh men at leisure? D. must be at the office of the "Life and Trust" at nine; and of our agreeable poets—our home-lions—Bryant has his daily paper to get out, and Halleck, like poor Charles Lamb, his (only) "heavy works," his ledger, for his morning task; and, save some half dozen idlers, all the men in town are at their counting-houses or offices, steeped to the lips in business by nine o'clock in the morning. But here the case is quite different; the women are not so hampered with domestic lif, and the men are "rentiersannuitants [sic]" and masters of their time. The breakfast party is not, however, I believe, of long standing here. I have been told that it was introduced by that Mr. Rogers whose household designation among us is "Rogers the poet."

The hour of the breakfast party is from ten to eleven. The number is, I believe, never allowed to exceed twelve; and only corned up to that when the host is constrained, like a certain friend of ours, by his diffusive benevolence, to extend his invitation (his "ticket for six") to a caravan of travellers.

The entertainment is little varied from our eight o'clock breakfasts. There are coffee, tea, and chocolate, rolls, toast, grated beef and eggs, and, in place of our solid beefsteaks and broiled chickens, reindeers' tongues, sweetmeats, fruit, and ices. These are not bad substitutes for heavier viands, and for our variety of delicate hot cakes. You see none of these, unless it be the poorest of them all, a muffin.

On some occasions there were guests invited to come after breakast, to enjoy the social hour that