As it continued to rain most perseveringly, we all remained below: the damp gentlemen round the stove, gradually becoming mildewed by the action of the fire; and the dry gentlemen lying at full length upon the seats, or slumbering uneasily with their faces on the tables, or walking up and down the cabin, which it was barely possible for a man of the middle height to do, without making bald places on his head by scraping it against the roof. At about six o'clock, all the small tables were put together to form one long table, and everybody sat down to tea, coffee, bread, butter, salmon, shad, liver, steak, potatoes, pickles, ham, chops, black puddings, and sausages.

“Will you try,” said my opposite neighbour, handing me a dish of potatoes, broken up in milk and butter, “ will you try some of these fixings?”

There are few wordd which perform such various duties as this word “fix.” It is the Caleb Quotem of the American vocabulary. You call upon a gentleman in a country town, and his help informs you that he is “fixing himself” just now, but will be down directly : by which you are to understand that he is dressing. You inquire, on board a steamboat, of a fellow passenger, whether breakfast will be ready soon, and he tells you he should think so, for when he was last below, they were “fixing the tables :” in other words, laying the cloth.