At Altona, A President Of One Of The Ci-Devant Parliaments Keeps An
Ordinary, In The French Style; And His Wife With Cheerful Dignity
Submits To Her Fate, Though She Is Arrived At An Age When People
Seldom Relinquish Their Prejudices.
A girl who waits there brought
a dozen double louis d'or concealed in her clothes, at the risk of
Her life, from France, which she preserves lest sickness or any
other distress should overtake her mistress, "who," she observed,
"was not accustomed to hardships." This house was particularly
recommended to me by an acquaintance of yours, the author of the
"American Farmer's Letters." I generally dine in company with him:
and the gentleman whom I have already mentioned is often diverted by
our declamations against commerce, when we compare notes respecting
the characteristics of the Hamburgers. "Why, madam," said he to me
one day, "you will not meet with a man who has any calf to his leg;
body and soul, muscles and heart, are equally shrivelled up by a
thirst of gain. There is nothing generous even in their youthful
passions; profit is their only stimulus, and calculations the sole
employment of their faculties, unless we except some gross animal
gratifications which, snatched at spare moments, tend still more to
debase the character, because, though touched by his tricking wand,
they have all the arts, without the wit, of the wing-footed god."
Perhaps you may also think us too severe; but I must add that the
more I saw of the manners of Hamburg, the more was I confirmed in my
opinion relative to the baleful effect of extensive speculations on
the moral character.
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