spitting-boxes

Updated: May 11, 2025

It is to these results, their causes, and their immediate and probable effects, his mind's eye will be irresistibly drawn, not to spitting-boxes, tobacco, two-pronged forks, or other conventional bagatelles, the particulars of each of which, as a solecism in polite manners, can be corrected and canvassed by any waiter from the London Tavern, Ludgate Street, and by every grisette from America Square to Brompton Terrace, who may choose to display their acquired gentility "for the nonce;" and it is the absence of a spirit of philosophy generally in our writers, and this affectation of prating so like waiting-gentlewomen, that stings Americans, and with some show of reason, when they see the great labours of their young country with the efforts of its people passed lightly by, and trifles caught up and commented upon, whose importance they cannot comprehend, and which they have neither leisure nor example to alter or attend to.

Tyrone Power - Impressions of America: During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II.