CHAPTER V.
_Geneseo_.
It is a lovely bright autumn morning, with a pure blue sky, and a pearly atmosphere through which scarce a zephyr is stealing; the boughs of the trees hang motionless; my window is open; but, how strange the perfect stillness! No warbling note comes from the feathered tribe to greet the rising sun, and sing, with untaught voice, their Maker's praise; even the ubiquitous house-sparrow is neither seen nor heard.

How strange this comparative absence of animal life in a country which, having been so recently intruded upon by the destroyer--man--one would expect to find superabundantly populated with those animals, against which he does not make war either for his use or amusement.

Nevertheless, so it is; and I have often strolled about for hours in the woods, in perfect solitude, with no sound to meet the ear--no life to catch the eye.

But I am wandering from the house too soon;--a jolly scream in the nursery reminds me that, at all events, there is animal life within, and that the possessor thereof has no disease of the lungs.
Let us now speed to breakfast; for folk are early in the New World, and do not lie a-bed all the forenoon, thinking how to waste the afternoon, and then, when the afternoon comes, try and relieve the tedium thereof by cooking up some project to get over the _ennui_ of the evening.
Whatever else you may deny the American, this one virtue you must allow him.

He is, emphatically, an early riser; as much so as our own most gracious Sovereign, whose example, if followed by her subjects--especially some in the metropolis--would do more to destroy London hells, and improve London health, than the Legislature, or Sir B.
Hall, and all the College of Surgeons, can ever hope to effect among the post-meridian drones.
Breakfast was speedily despatched, and Senor Cabanos y Carvajal followed as a matter of course.