Chapter VIII.

----------------“What is yon gentleman?”
Nurse.  “The son and heir of old Tiberio.” 
Juliet.  “What’s he that follows there, that would not dance?”
Nurse.  “Marry, I know not.”

Romeo and Juliet.

The sun was just heaving up, out of the field of waters in which the blue islands of Massachusetts lie, when the inhabitants of Newport were seen opening their doors and windows, and preparing for the different employments of the day, with the freshness and alacrity of people who had wisely adhered to the natural allotments of time in seeking their rests, or in pursuing their pleasures.  The morning salutations passed cheerfully from one to another, as each undid the slight fastenings of his shop; and many a kind inquiry was made, and returned, after the condition of a daughter’s fever, or the rheumatism of some aged grandam.  As the landlord of the “Foul Anchor” was so wary in protecting the character of his house from any unjust imputations of unseemly revelling, so was he among the foremost in opening his doors, to catch any transient customer, who might feel the necessity of washing away the damps of the past night, in some invigorating stomachic This cordial was very generally taken in the British provinces, under the various names of “bitters,” “juleps,” “morning-drams,” “fogmatics,” &c., according as the situation of each district appeared to require some particular preventive.  The custom is getting a little into disuse, it is true; but still it retains much of that sacred character which it would seem is the concomitant of antiquity.  It is not a little extraordinary that this venerable and laudable practice, of washing away the unwholesome impurities engendered in the human system, at a time, when as it is entirely without any moral protector, it is left exposed to the attacks of all the evils to which flesh is heir, should subject the American to the witticisms of his European brother.  We are not among the least grateful to those foreign philanthropists who take so deep an interest in our welfare as seldom to let any republican foible pass, without applying to it, as it merits, the caustic application of their purifying pens.  We are, perhaps, the more sensible of this generosity, because we have had so much occasion to witness, that, so great is their zeal in behalf of our infant States, (robust, and a little unmanageable perhaps, but still infant) they are wont, in the warmth of their ardour, to reform Cis-atlantic sins, to overlook not a few backslidings of their own.  Numberless are the moral missionaries that the mother country, for instance, has sent among us, on these pious and benevolent errands.  We can only regret that their efforts have been crowned with so little success.  It was our fortune to be familiarly acquainted with one of these worthies, who never lost an opportunity of declaiming, above all, against the infamy of the particular practice