Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. I.djvu/51

 a cheerful and unembarrassed social intercourse seems to characterise the life of this circle. They are continually visiting one another. The banks of the Hudson are now in all the pomp of autumn, and the foliage of the woods which clothe the shores and the heights, and which consist of a great variety of trees, is now brilliant with the most splendid variation of colour, from light yellow to intense scarlet; but it is too gorgeous and chaotic a splendour to be truly agreeable to my eye, which requires more uniformity of colour.

Of fruit there is here the greatest abundance; the most beautiful peaches, although their season is properly over; pears, plums, grapes, that is to say, hot-house grapes and many other. The Downings table is ornamented every day with a basket filled with the most glorious fruit—really Hesperian—and beautiful flowers arranged with the most exquisite taste. The breakfasts here, in the country, are much more substantial than with us in Sweden. Besides coffee and tea the table is supplied with fish, fresh meat, buckwheat cakes, omelets, and so on. Besides which here is bread of Indian corn and a kind of sweet potato, which is peculiar to the country, and which is an extremely good and palatable fruit. It is long, soft, and mealy, yellow and very sweet. It is commonly brought to table unpeeled, and is eaten with butter. At dinner there is meat, in the same way as in England, together with various vegetables and fruit peculiar to America. In the afternoon but little is eaten; they have commonly tea, and bread-and-butter or tea-bread, and after that preserved fruits, mostly peach, and cream. One custom, which appears to me to be especially excellent, is to place little tables beside the guests, one to each two persons, before the tea is handed round. In this way people place themselves together, two and two, and have the most delicious little tête-à-têtes, and that you know I am very fond of. I cannot converse well except when tête-à-tête.