elegance or splendour survive sometimes in the size of the rooms,
sometimes in a little carved wood-work about the mantelpieces or
wainscoatings of these mansions; but all things have a Castle Rackrent air
of neglect, and dreary careless untidiness, with which the dirty
bare-footed negro servants are in excellent keeping. Occasionally a huge
pair of dazzling shirt gills, out of which a black visage grins as out of
some vast white paper cornet, adorns the sable footman of the
establishment, but unfortunately without at all necessarily indicating any
downward prolongation of the garment; and the perfect tulip bed of a head
handkerchief with which the female attendants of these 'great families'
love to bedizen themselves, frequently stands them instead of every other
most indispensable article of female attire.

As for my shopping, the goods or rather 'bads,' at which I used to
grumble, in your village emporium at Lenox, are what may be termed 'first
rate,' both in excellence and elegance, compared with the vile products of
every sort which we wretched southerners are expected to accept as the
conveniences of life in exchange for current coin of the realm. I regret
to say, moreover, that all these infamous articles are Yankee
made--expressly for this market, where every species of _thing_ (to use
the most general term I can think of), from list shoes to pianofortes, is
procured from the North--almost always New England, utterly worthless of
its kind, and dearer than the most perfect specimens of the same articles
would be anywhere else. The incredible variety and ludicrous combinations
of goods to be met with in one of these southern shops beats the stock of
your village omnium-gatherum hollow to be sure, one class of articles, and
that probably the most in demand here, is not sold over any counter in
Massachussetts--cow-hides, and man-traps, of which a large assortment
enters necessarily into the furniture of every southern shop.