Charles Dickens, you so FUNny.

I'm within tobacco-spitting distance of finishing Charles Dickens' most excellent American Notes, and have to say that it has been a most enjoyable little foray into CD's non-fiction writing. Also, his comments on the US of A are quite apropos for these days--what with incompetent, greedy, mean-spirited political leaders and massive amounts of stupidity. Not to mention all of the tobacco spitting. And here's a bit about The Shakers that I found particularly amusing:

"Presently we came to the beginning of the village, and alighting at the door of a house where the Shaker manufactures are sold, and which is the headquarters of the elders, requested permission to see the Shaker worship.

"Pending the conveyance of this request to some person in authority, we walked into a grim room, where several grim hats were hanging on grim pegs, and the time was grimly told by a grim clock which uttered every tick with a kind of struggle, as if it broke the grim silence reluctantly, and under protest.  Ranged against the wall were six or eight stiff, high-backed chairs, and they partook so strongly of the general grimness that one would much rather have sat on the floor than incurred the smallest obligation to any of them.

"Presently, there stalked into this apartment, a grim old Shaker, with eyes as hard, and dull, and cold, as the great round metal buttons on his coat and waistcoat; a sort of calm goblin.  Being informed of our desire, he produced a newspaper wherein the body of elders, whereof he was a member, had advertised but a few days before, that in consequence of certain unseemly interruptions which their worship had received from strangers, their chapel was closed to the public for the space of one year.

"As nothing was to be urged in opposition to this reasonable arrangement, we requested leave to make some trifling purchases of Shaker goods; which was grimly conceded.  We accordingly repaired to a store in the same house and on the opposite side of the passage, where the stock was presided over by something alive in a russet case, which the elder said was a woman; and which I suppose was a woman, though I should not have suspected it."

P.S. The complete text is available to you for free at https://www.gutenberg.org/files/675/675-h/675-h.htm. Or (no doubt) at your local library. No, no...thank YOU.