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UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE.

carefully-tended grass-plot, its purpose being to supply a healthy exercise-ground for young chicken and pheasants; the hens, their mothers, being enclosed in coops placed upon the same green flooring.

All these encumbrances were now removed, and as the afternoon advanced, the guests gathered on the spot, where music, dancing, and the singing of songs went forward with great spirit throughout the evening. The propriety of every one was intense, by reason of the influence of Fancy, who, as an additional precaution in this direction, had strictly charged her father and the tranter to carefully avoid saying 'thee' and 'thou' in their conversation, on the plea that those ancient words sounded so very humiliating to persons of decent taste; also that they were never to be seen drawing the back of the hand across the mouth after drinking,—a local English cus-

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