The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Potiphar Papers, by George William Curtis

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Title: The Potiphar Papers

Author: George William Curtis


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THE POTIPHAR PAPERS

By George William Curtis


“Imagination fondly stoops to trace
The parlor splendors of that festive place.”

_Goldsmith’s Deserted Village._


“Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase,
barbarise or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible
operation, like that of the air we breathe in.”

_Burke’s First Letter on a Regicide Peace._


“And I do seriously approve of that saying of yours, ‘that you would
rather be a civil, well-governed, well-grounded, temperate, poor angler,
than a drunken lord.’ But I hope there is none such.”

_Walton’s Angler._


“‘Mon petit faquin de philosophé,’ dit le Chevalier de Grammont,
‘tu fais ici le Caton de Normandie.’”

“‘Est-ce que je mens?’ poursuivit Saint-Evremond.”

_Memoires de Grammont._





PREFATORY LETTER TO REV. CREAM CHEESE.


REV. AND DEAR SIR:

It is surely unnecessary to call the attention of so astute an
observer, and so austere a critic, as yourself, to the fact that the
title of the leading essay in this little volume (of which, permit me
to say, you are so essential an ornament) is marked as a quotation;
and a quotation, as you will very well remember, from the lips of our
friend, Mrs, Potiphar, herself.

Therefore, Rev. Sir, your judgment, which, you must allow me to say,
is no less impartial than your experience is profound, will suggest to
you that the subject of that essay (of the points of which the
succeeding sketches are but elaborations) is the aspect of what is
currently termed “our best society”--whether with reason or not, is
beside the purpose.

Your pastoral charity, I am convinced, will persuade you to direct the
attention of your parishioners to this fact, and to assure them, that,
when you prepared your timely treatise upon the progress of purple
chasubles among the Feejee islanders, you were not justly amenable to
the charge of omitting all notice of the cultivation of artificial
flowers by the Grim Tartars. The latter are, I believe, a very
estimable people, but they were not the subjects of your
consideration.

To those in your parish, and elsewhere, who have thought fit to
suppose that Mrs. Potiphar is Mrs. Somebody-else,--what can we say?
conscious as we are, that they who have once known that lady could
never confound her with another.

But for those who have actually supposed you, yourself, Reverend Sir,
to be, not somebody else, but nobody, (!) we can only smile
compassionately, and express the hope that a broader experience may
give them greater wisdom.

In taking leave of you, Sir, I know that I express the warmest wish of
a large, a very large parish (might almost say, diocese) that you may
long survive. For your parish is fully, and, as I think, most
correctly persuaded, that while there is a Cream Cheese, there will
always be a Mrs. Potiphar.

With all proper regard,

I am,

Reverend and Dear Sir,

Your very obedient,

humble servant,

THE EDITOR.

NEW YORK, _December_, 1853.




I. -- “OUR BEST SOCIETY.”


If gilt were only gold, or sugar-candy common sense, what a fine thing
our society would be! If to lavish money upon _objets de vertu_,
to wear the most costly dresses, and always to have them cut in the
height of the fashion; to build houses thirty feet broad, as if they
were palaces; to furnish them with all the luxurious devices of
Parisian genius; to give superb banquets; at which your guests laugh,
and which make you miserable; to drive a fine carriage and ape the
European liveries, and crests, and coats-of-arms; to resent the
friendly advances of your baker’s wife, and the lady of your butcher,
(you being yourself a cobbler’s daughter); to talk much of the “old
families” and of your aristocratic foreign friends; to despise labour;
to prate of “good society;” to travesty and parody, in every
conceivable way, a society which we know only in books and by the
superficial observation of foreign travel, which arises out of a
social organization entirely unknown to us, and which is opposed to
our fundamental and essential principles; if all this were fine, what
a prodigiously fine society would ours be!

This occurred to us upon lately receiving a card of invitation to a
brilliant ball. We were quietly ruminating over our evening fire, with
Disraeli’s Wellington speech, “all tears,” in our hands, with the
account of a great man’s burial, and a little man’s triumph across the
channel. So many great men gone, we mused, and such great crises
impending! This democratic movement in Europe; Kossuth--and Mazzini
waiting for the moment to give the word; the Russian bear watchfully
sucking his paws; the Napoleonic empire redivivus; Cuba, and
annexation, and slavery; California and Australia, and the consequent
considerations of political economy; dear me! exclaimed we, putting on
a fresh hodful of coal, we must look a little into the state of
parties.

As we put down the coal-scuttle there was a knock at the door. We
said, “come in,” and in came a neat Alhambra-watered envelope,
containing the announcement that the queen of fashion was “at home”
 that evening week. Later in the evening came a friend to smoke a
cigar. The card was lying upon the table, and he read it with
eagerness. “You’ll go, of course,” said he, “for you will meet all
the ‘best society.’”

Shall we, truly? Shall we really see the “best society of the city,”
 the picked flower of its genius, character, and beauty? What makes the
“best society” of men and women? The noblest specimens of each, of
course. The men who mould the time, who refresh our faith in heroism
and virtue, who make Plato and Zeno, and Shakespeare, and all
Shakespeare’s gentlemen, possible, again. The women, whose beauty, and
sweetness, and dignity, and high accomplishment, and grace, make us
understand the Greek Mythology, and weaken our desire to have some
glimpse of the most famous women of history. The “best society” is
that in which the virtues are most shining, which is the most
charitable, forgiving, long-suffering, modest, and innocent. The
“best society” is, in its very name, that in which there is the least
hypocrisy and insincerity of all kinds, which recoils from, and
blasts, artificiality, which is anxious to be all that it is possible
to be, and which sternly reprobates all shallow pretence, all
coxcombry and foppery, and insists upon simplicity as the infallible
characteristic of true worth. That is the “best society,” which
comprises the best men and women.

Had we recently arrived from the moon, we might, upon hearing that we
were to meet the “best society,” have fancied that we were about to
enjoy an opportunity not to be overvalued. But unfortunately we were
not so freshly arrived. We had received other cards, and had perfected
our toilette many times, to meet this same society, so magnificently
described, and had found it the least “best” of all. Who compose it?
Whom shall we meet if we go to this ball? We shall meet three classes
of persons: first, those who are rich, and who have all that money can
buy; second, those who belong to what are technically called “the good
old families,” because some ancestor was a man of mark in the state or
country, or was very rich, and has kept the fortune in the family; and
thirdly, a swarm of youths who can dance dexterously, and who are
invited for that purpose. Now these are all arbitrary and factitious
distinctions upon which to found so profound a social difference as
that which exists in American, or, at least, in New York
society. First, as a general rule, the rich men of every community who
make their own money are not the most generally intelligent and
cultivated. They have a shrewd talent which secures a fortune, and
which keeps them closely at the work of amassing from their youngest
years until they are old. They are sturdy men of simple tastes
often. Sometimes, though rarely, very generous, but necessarily with
an altogether false and exaggerated idea of the importance of
money. They are rather rough, unsympathetic, and, perhaps, selfish
class, who, themselves, despise purple and fine linen, and still
prefer a cot-bed and a bare room, although they may be worth
millions. But they are married to scheming, or ambitious, or
disappointed women, whose life is a prolonged pageant, and they are
dragged hither and thither in it, are bled of their golden blood, and
forced into a position they do not covet and which they despise. Then
there are the inheritors of wealth. How many of them inherit the
valiant genius and hard frugality which built up their fortunes; how
many acknowledge the stern and heavy responsibility of their
opportunities; how many refuse to dream their lives away in a Sybarite
luxury; how many are smitten with the lofty ambition of achieving an
enduring name by works of a permanent value; how many do not dwindle
into dainty dilettanti, and dilute their manhood with factitious
sentimentality instead of a hearty human sympathy; how many are not
satisfied with having the fastest horses and the “crackest” carriages,
and an unlimited wardrobe, and a weak affectation and puerile
imitation of foreign life?

{Illustration}

And who are these of our secondly, these “old families”? The spirit of
our time and of our country knows no such thing, but the habitué of
society hears constantly of “a good family.” It means simply, the
collective mass of children, grandchildren, nephews, nieces, and
descendants of some man who deserved well of his country, and whom his
country honors. But sad is the heritage of a great name! The son of
Burke will inevitably be measured by Burke. The niece of Pope must
show some superiority to other women (so to speak), or her equality is
inferiority. The feeling of men attributes some magical charm to
blood, and we look to see the daughter of Helen as fair as her mother,
and the son of Shakespeare musical as his sire. If they are not so, if
they are merely names, and common persons--if there is no Burke, nor
Shakespeare, nor Washington, nor Bacon, in their words, or actions, or
lives, then we must pity them, and pass gently on, not upbraiding
them, but regretting that it is one of the laws of greatness that it
dwindles all things in its vicinity, which would otherwise show large
enough. Nay, in our regard for the great man, we may even admit to a
compassionate honor, as pensioners upon our charity, those who bear
and transmit his name. But if these heirs should presume upon that
fame, and claim any precedence of living men and women because their
dead grandfather was a hero,--they must be shown the door directly. We
should dread to be born a Percy, or a Colonna, or a Bonaparte. We
should not like to be the second Duke of Wellington, nor Charles
Dickens, jr. It is a terrible thing one would say, to a mind of
honorable feeling, to be pointed out as somebody’s son, or uncle, or
granddaughter, as if the excellence were all derived. It must be a
little humiliating to reflect that if your great uncle had not been
somebody, you would be nobody,--that in fact, you are only a name, and
that, if you should consent to change it for the sake of a fortune, as
is sometimes done, you would cease to be any thing but a rich man. “My
father was President, or Governor of the State,” some pompous man may
say. But, by Jupiter! king of gods and men, what are _you?_ is the
instinctive response. Do you not see, our pompous friend, that you are
only pointing your own unimportance? If your father was Governor of
the State, what right have you to use that fact only to fatten your
self-conceit? Take care, good care; for whether you say it by your
lips or by your life that withering response awaits you,--“then what
are _you?_” If your ancestor was great, you are under bonds to
greatness. If you are small, make haste to learn it betimes, and,
thanking Heaven that your name has been made illustrious, retire into
a corner and keep it, at least, untarnished.

Our thirdly, is a class made by sundry French tailors, bootmakers,
dancing-masters, and Mr. Brown. They are a corps-de-ballet, for the
use of private entertainments. They are fostered by society for the
use of young debutantes, and hardier damsels, who have dared two or
three years of the “tight” polka. They are cultivated for their heels,
not their heads. Their life begins at ten o’clock in the evening, and
lasts until four in the morning. They go home and sleep until nine;
then they reel, sleepy, to counting-houses and offices, and doze on
desks until dinner-time. Or, unable to do that, they are actively at
work all day, and their cheeks grow pale, and their lips thin, and
their eyes bloodshot and hollow, and they drag themselves home at
evening to catch a nap until the ball begins, or to dine and smoke at
their club, and be very manly with punches and coarse stories; and
then to rush into hot and glittering rooms and seize very decolleté
girls closely around the waist, and dash with them around an area of
stretched linen, saying in the panting pauses, “How very hot it is!”
 “How very pretty Miss Podge looks!” “What a good redowa!” “Are you
going to Mrs. Potiphar’s?”

Is this the assembled flower of manhood and womanhood, called “best
society,” and to see which is so envied a privilege? If such are the
elements, can we be long in arriving at the present state, and
necessary future condition of parties?

“Vanity Fair,” is peculiarly a picture of modern society. It aims at
English follies, but its mark is universal, as the madness is. It is
called a satire, but after much diligent reading, we cannot discover
the satire. A state of society not at all superior to that of “Vanity
Fair” is not unknown to our experience; and, unless truth-telling be
satire; unless the most tragically real portraiture be satire; unless
scalding tears of sorrow, and the bitter regret of a manly mind over
the miserable spectacle of artificiality, wasted powers, misdirected
energies, and lost opportunities, be satirical; we do not find satire
in that sad story. The reader closes it with a grief beyond tears. It
leaves a vague apprehension in the mind, as if we should suspect the
air to be poisoned. It suggests the terrible thought of the
enfeebling of moral power, and the deterioration of noble character,
as a necessary consequence of contact with “society.” Every man looks
suddenly and sharply around him, and accosts himself and his
neighbors, to ascertain if they are all parties to this
corruption. Sentimental youths and maidens, upon velvet sofas, or in
calf-bound libraries, resolve that it is an insult to human
nature--are sure that their velvet and calf-bound friends are not like
the dramatis personae of “Vanity Fair,” and that the drama is
therefore hideous and unreal. They should remember, what they
uniformly and universally forget, that we are not invited, upon the
rising of the curtain to behold a cosmorama, or picture of the world,
but a representation of that part of it called Vanity Fair. What its
just limits are-how far its poisonous purlieus reach--how much of the
world’s air is tainted by it, is a question which every thoughtful man
will ask himself, with a shudder, and look sadly around, to answer. If
the sentimental objectors rally again to the charge, and declare that,
if we wish to improve the world, its virtuous ambition must be piqued
and stimulated by making the shining heights of “the ideal” more
radiant; we reply, that none shall surpass us in honoring the men
whose creations of beauty inspire and instruct mankind. But if they
benefit the world, it is no less true that a vivid apprehension of the
depths into which we are sunken or may sink, nerves the soul’s courage
quite as much as the alluring mirage of the happy heights we may
attain. “To hold the mirror up to Nature,” is still the most potent
method of shaming sin and strengthening virtue.

If “Vanity Fair” is a satire, what novel of society is not? Are
“Vivian Grey,” and “Pelham,” and the long catalogue of books
illustrating English, or the host of Balzacs, Sands, Sues, and Dumas,
that paint French society, any less satires? Nay, if you should catch
any dandy in Broadway, or in Pall-Mall, or upon the Boulevards, this
very morning, and write a coldly true history of his life and actions,
his doings and undoings, would it not be the most scathing and
tremendous satire?--if by satire you mean the consuming melancholy of
the conviction, that the life of that pendant to a moustache, is an
insult to the possible life of a man?

We have read of a hypocrisy so thorough, that it was surprised you
should think it hypocritical; and we have bitterly thought of the
saying, when hearing one mother say of another mother’s child, that
she had “made a good match,” because the girl was betrothed to a
stupid boy whose father was rich. The remark was the key of our
social feeling.

Let us look at it a little, and, first of all, let the reader consider
the criticism, and not the critic. We may like very well, in our
individual capacity, to partake of the delicacies prepared by our
hostess’s _chef_, we may not be adverse to _paté_, and myriad _objets
de goût_, and if you caught us in a corner at the next ball, putting
away a fair share of _dinde aux truffes_, we know you would have at us,
in a tone of great moral indignation, and wish to know why we sneaked
into great houses, eating good suppers, and drinking choice wines,
and then went away with an indigestion, to write dyspeptic disgusts
at society.

We might reply that it is necessary to know something of a subject
before writing about it, and that if a man wished to describe the
habits of South Sea Islanders, it is useless to go to Greenland; we
might also confess a partiality for _paté_, and a tenderness for
_truffes_, and acknowledge that, considering our single absence
would not put down extravagant, pompous parties, we were not strong
enough to let the morsels drop into unappreciating mouths; or we might
say, that if a man invited us to see his new house, it would not be
ungracious nor insulting to his hospitality, to point out whatever
weak parts we might detect in it, nor to declare our candid
conviction, that it was built upon wrong principles and could not
stand. He might believe us if we had been in the house, but he
certainly would not, if we had never seen it. Nor would it be a very
wise reply upon his part, that we might build a better if we didn’t
like that. We are not fond of David’s pictures, but we certainly could
never paint half so well; nor of Pope’s poetry, but posterity will
never hear of our verses. Criticism is not construction, it is
observation. If we could surpass in its own way every thing which
displeased us, we should make short work of it, and instead of showing
what fatal blemishes deform our present society, we should present a
specimen of perfection, directly.

{Illustration}

We went to the brilliant ball. There was too much of everything. Too
much light, and eating, and drinking, and dancing, and flirting, and
dressing, and feigning, and smirking, and much too many people. Good
taste insists first upon fitness. But why had Mrs. Potiphar given this
ball? We inquired industriously, and learned it was because she did
not give one last year. Is it then essential to do this thing
biennially? inquired we with some trepidation. “Certainly,” was the
bland reply, “or society will forget you.” Everybody was unhappy at
Mrs. Potiphar’s, save a few girls and boys, who danced violently all
the evening. Those who did not dance walked up and down the rooms as
well as they could, squeezing by non-dancing ladies, causing them to
swear in their hearts as the brusque broadcloth carried away the light
outworks of gauze and gossamer. The dowagers, ranged in solid
phalanx, occupied all the chairs and sofas against the wall, and
fanned themselves until supper-time, looking at each other’s diamonds,
and criticising the toilettes of the younger ladies, each narrowly
watching her peculiar Polly Jane, that she did not betray too much
interest in any man who was not of a certain fortune. It is the cold,
vulgar truth, madam, nor are we in the slightest degree
exaggerating. Elderly gentlemen, twisting single gloves in a very
wretched manner, came up and bowed to the dowagers, and smirked, and
said it was a pleasant party, and a handsome house, and then clutched
their hands behind them, and walked miserably away, looking as affable
as possible. And the dowagers made a little fun of the elderly
gentlemen, among themselves, as they walked away.

Then came the younger non-dancing men--a class of the community who
wear black cravats and waistcoats, and thrust their thumbs and
forefingers in their waistcoat pockets, and are called “talking men.”
 Some of them are literary, and affect the philosopher; have, perhaps,
written a book or two, and are a small species of lion to very young
ladies. Some are of the _blasé_ kind; men who affect the
extremest elegance, and are reputed “so aristocratic,” and who care
for nothing in particular, but wish they had not been born gentlemen,
in which case they might have escaped ennui. These gentlemen stand
with hat in hand, and coats and trowsers most unexceptionable. They
are the “so gentlemanly” persons of whom one hears a great deal, but
which seems to mean nothing but cleanliness. Vivian Grey and Pelham
are the models of their ambition, and they succeed in being
Pendennis. They enjoy the reputation of being “very clever,” and “very
talented fellows,” “smart chaps,” etc., but they refrain from proving
what is so generously conceded. They are often men of a certain
cultivation. They have travelled, many of them,--spending a year or
two in Paris, and a month or two in the rest of Europe. Consequently
they endure society at home, with a smile, and a shrug, and a graceful
superciliousness, which is very engaging. They are perfectly at home,
and they rather despise Young America, which, in the next room, is
diligently earning its invitation. They prefer to hover about the
ladies who did not come out this season, but are a little used to the
world, with whom they are upon most friendly terms, and who criticise
together very freely all the great events in the great world of
fashion.

These elegant Pendennises we saw at Mrs. Potiphar’s, but not without a
sadness which can hardly be explained. They had been boys once, all of
them, fresh and frank-hearted, and full of a noble ambition. They had
read and pondered the histories of great men; how they resolved, and
struggled, and achieved. In the pure portraiture of genius, they had
loved and honored noble women, and each young heart was sworn to truth
and the service of beauty. Those feelings were chivalric and
fair. Those boyish instincts clung to whatever was lovely, and
rejected the specious snare, however graceful and elegant. They
sailed, new knights, upon that old and endless crusade against
hypocrisy and the devil, and they were lost in the luxury of Corinth,
nor longer seek the difficult shores beyond. A present smile was worth
a future laurel. The ease of the moment was worth immortal
tranquillity. They renounced the stern worship of the unknown God, and
acknowledged the deities of Athens. But the seal of their shame is
their own smile at their early dreams, and the high hopes of their
boyhood, their sneering infidelity of simplicity, their skepticism of
motives and of men. Youths, whose younger years were fervid with the
resolution to strike and win, to deserve, at least, a gentle
remembrance, if not a dazzling fame, are content to eat, and drink,
and sleep well; to go to the opera and all the balls; to be known as
“gentlemanly,” and “aristocratic,” and “dangerous,” and “elegant;” to
cherish a luxurious and enervating indolence, and to “succeed,” upon
the cheap reputation of having been “fast” in Paris. The end of such
men is evident enough from the beginning. They are snuffed out by a
“great match,” and become an appendage to a rich woman; or they
dwindle off into old roués, men of the world in sad earnest, and not
with elegant affectation, _blasé_; and as they began Arthur
Pendennises, so they end the Major. But, believe it, that old fossil
heart is wrung sometimes by a mortal pang, as it remembers those
squandered opportunities and that lost life.

From these groups we passed into the dancing-room. We have seen
dancing in other countries, and dressing. We have certainly never seen
gentlemen dance so easily, gracefully and well as the American. But
the _style_ of dancing, in its whirl, its rush, its fury, is only
equalled by that of the masked balls at the French Opera, and the
balls at the _Salle Valentino_, the _Jardin Mabille_, the
_Chateau Rouge_, and other favorite resorts of Parisian Grisettes
and Lorettes. We saw a few young men looking upon the dance very
soberly, and, upon inquiry, learned that they were engaged to certain
ladies of the corps-de-ballet. Nor did we wonder that the spectacle of
a young woman whirling in a _décolleté_ state, and in the embrace
of a warm youth, around a heated room, induced a little sobriety upon
her lover’s face, if not a sadness in his heart. Amusement,
recreation, enjoyment! There are no more beautiful things. But this
proceeding falls under another head. We watch the various toilettes of
these bounding belles. They were rich and tasteful. But a man at our
elbow, of experience and shrewd observation, said, with a sneer, for
which we called him to account, “I observe that American ladies are so
rich in charms that they are not at all chary of them. It is certainly
generous to us miserable blackcoats. But, do you know, it strikes me
as a generosity of display that must necessarily leave the donor
poorer in maidenly feeling.” We thought ourselves cynical, but this
was intolerable; and in a very crisp manner we demanded an apology.

“Why,” responded our friend with more of sadness than of satire in his
tone, “why are you so exasperated? Look at this scene! Consider that
this is, really, the life of these girls. This is what they ‘come out’
for. This is the end of their ambition. They think of it, dream of
it, long for it. Is it amusement? Yes, to a few, possibly. But listen,
and gather, if you can, from their remarks (when they make any) that
they have any thought beyond this, and going to church very rigidly on
Sunday. The vigor of polking and church-going are proportioned; as is
the one so is the other. My young friend, I am no ascetic, and do not
suppose a man is damned because he dances. But Life is not a ball
(more’s the pity, truly, for these butterflies), nor is its sole duty
and delight, dancing. When I consider this spectacle,--when I remember
what a noble and beautiful woman is, what a manly man,--when I reel,
dazzled by this glare, drunken with these perfumes, confused by this
alluring music, and reflect upon the enormous sums wasted in a pompous
profusion that delights no one,--when I look around upon all this
rampant vulgarity in tinsel and Brussels lace, and think how fortunes
go, how men struggle and lose the bloom of their honesty, how women
hide in a smiling pretence, and eye with caustic glances their
neighbor’s newer house, diamonds, or porcelain, and observe their
daughters, such as these,--why, I tremble and tremble, and this scene
to-night, every ‘crack’ ball this winter will be, not the pleasant
society of men and women, but--even in this young country--an orgie
such as rotting Corinth saw, a frenzied festival of Rome in its
decadence.”

There was a sober truth in this bitterness, and we turned away to
escape the sombre thought of the moment. Addressing one of the panting
Houris who stood melting in a window, we spoke (and confess how
absurdly) of the Düsseldorf Gallery. It was merely to avoid saying how
warm the room was, and how pleasant the party was; facts upon which we
had already sufficiently enlarged. “Yes, they are pretty pictures; but
la! how long it must have taken Mr. Düsseldorf to paint them all;” was
the reply.

By the Farnesian Hercules! no Roman sylph in her city’s decline would
ever have called the sun-god, Mr. Apollo. We hope that Houri melted
entirely away in the window, but we certainly did not stay to see.

Passing out toward the supper-room we encountered two young
men. “What, Hal,” said one, “_you_ at Mrs. Potiphar’s?” It seems
that Hal was a sprig of one of the old “families.” “Well, Joe,” said
Hal, a little confused, “it _is_ a little strange. The fact is I
didn’t mean to be here, but I concluded to compromise by coming,
_and not being introduced to the host_.” Hal could come, eat
Potiphar’s supper, drink his wines, spoil his carpets, laugh at his
fashionable struggles, and affect the puppyism of a foreign Lord,
because he disgraced the name of a man who had done some service
somewhere, while Potiphar was only an honest man who made a fortune.

The supper-room was a pleasant place. The table was covered with a
chaos of supper. Everything sweet and rare, and hot and cold, solid
and liquid, was there. It was the very apotheosis of gilt
gingerbread. There was a universal rush and struggle. The charge of
the guards at Waterloo was nothing to it. Jellies, custards,
oyster-soup, ice-cream, wine and water, gushed in profuse cascades
over transparent precipices of _tulle_, muslin, gauze, silk, and
satin. Clumsy boys tumbled against costly dresses and smeared them
with preserves,--when clean plates failed, the contents of plates
already used were quietly “chucked” under the table--heeltaps of
champagne were poured into the oyster tureens or overflowed upon
plates to clear the glasses--wine of all kinds flowed in torrents,
particularly down the throats of very young men, who evinced their
manhood by becoming noisy, troublesome, and disgusting, and were
finally either led, sick, into the hat room, or carried out of the
way, drunk. The supper over, the young people attended by their
matrons descended to the dancing-room for the “German.” This is a
dance commencing usually at midnight or a little after, and continuing
indefinitely toward daybreak. The young people were attended by their
matrons, who were there to supervise the morals and manners of their
charges. To secure the performance of this duty, the young people took
good care to sit where the matrons could not see them, nor did they,
by any chance, look toward the quarter in which the matrons sat. In
that quarter through all the varying mazes of the prolonged dance, to
two o’clock, to three, to four, sat the bediamonded dowagers, the
mothers, the matrons,--against nature, against common sense. They
babbled with each other, they drowsed, they dozed. Their fans fell
listless into their laps. In the adjoining room, out of the waking
sight, even, of the then sleeping mammas, the daughters whirled in the
close embrace of partners who had brought down bottles of champagne
from the supper-room, and put them by the side of their chairs for
occasional refreshment during the dance. The dizzy hours staggered
by--“Azalia, you _must_ come now,” had been already said a dozen
times, but only as by the scribes. Finally it was declared with
authority. Azalia went,--Amelia--Arabella. The rest followed. There
was a prolonged cloaking, there were lingering farewells. A few papas
were in the supper-room, sitting among the _débris_ of game. A
few young non-dancing husbands sat beneath gas unnaturally bright,
reading whatever chance book was at hand, and thinking of the young
child at home waiting for mamma who was dancing the “German” below. A
few exhausted matrons sat in the robing-room, tired, sad, wishing Jane
would come up; assailed at intervals by a vague suspicion that it was
not quite worth while; wondering how it was they used to have such
good times at balls; yawning and looking at their watches; while the
regular beat of the music below, with sardonic sadness, continued. At
last Jane came up, had had the most glorious time, and went down with
mamma to the carriage, and so drove home. Even the last Jane went--the
last noisy youth was expelled, and Mr. and Mrs. Potiphar having duly
performed their biennial social duty, dismissed the music, ordered the
servants to count the spoons, and an hour or two after daylight went
to bed. Enviable Mr. and Mrs. Potiphar!

We are now prepared for the great moral indignation of the friend who
saw us eating our _dinde aux truffes_ in that remarkable
supper-room. We are waiting to hear him say in the most moderate and
“gentlemanly” manner, that it is all very well to select flaws and
present them as specimens, and to learn from him, possibly with
indignant publicity, that the present condition of parties is not what
we have intimated. Or, in his quiet and pointed way, he may smile at
our fiery assault upon edged flounces and nuga pyramids, and the
kingdom of Lilliput in general.

Yet, after all, and despite the youths who are led out, and carried
home, or who stumble through the “German,” this is a sober matter. My
friend told us we should see the “best society.” But he is a
prodigious wag. Who make this country? From whom is its character of
unparalleled enterprise, heroism and success derived? Who have given
it its place in the respect and the fear of the world? Who, annually,
recruit its energies, confirm its progress, and secure its triumph?
Who are its characteristic children, the pith, the sinew, the bone, of
its prosperity? Who found, and direct, and continue its manifold
institutions of mercy and education? Who are, essentially, Americans?
Indignant friend, these classes, whoever they may be, are the “best
society,” because they alone are the representatives of its character
and cultivation. They are the “best society” of New York, of Boston,
of Baltimore, of St. Louis, of New Orleans, whether they live upon six
hundred or sixty thousand dollars a year--whether they inhabit
princely houses in fashionable streets (which they often do), or
not--whether their sons have graduated at Celarius’ and the _Jardin
Mabille_, or have never been out of their fathers’ shops--whether
they have “air” and “style,” and are “so gentlemanly” and “so
aristocratic,” or not. Your shoemaker, your lawyer, your butcher, your
clergyman--if they are simple and steady, and, whether rich or poor,
are unseduced by the sirens of extravagance and ruinous display, help
make up the “best society.” For that mystic communion is not composed
of the rich, but of the worthy; and is “best” by its virtues, and not
by its vices. When Johnson, Burke, Goldsmith, Garrick, Reynolds, and
their friends, met at supper in Goldsmith’s rooms, where was the “best
society” in England? When George the Fourth outraged humanity and
decency in his treatment of Queen Caroline, who was the first
scoundrel in Europe?

Pause yet a moment, indignant friend. Whose habits and principles
would ruin this country as rapidly as it has been made? Who are
enamored of a puerile imitation of foreign splendors? Who strenuously
endeavor to graft the questionable points of Parisian society upon our
own? Who pass a few years in Europe, and return skeptical of
republicanism and human improvement, longing and sighing for more
sharply emphasised social distinctions? Who squander with profuse
recklessness the hard-earned fortunes of their sires? Who diligently
devote their time to nothing, foolishly and wrongly supposing that a
young English nobleman has nothing to do? Who, in fine, evince by
their collective conduct, that they regard their Americanism as a
misfortune, and are so the most deadly enemies of their country? None
but what our wag facetiously termed “the best society.”

If the reader doubts, let him consider its practical results in any
great emporium of “best society.” Marriage is there regarded as a
luxury, too expensive for any but the sons of rich men, or fortunate
young men. We once heard an eminent divine assert, and only half in
sport, that the rate of living was advancing so incredibly, that
weddings in his experience were perceptibly diminishing. The reasons
might have been many and various. But we all acknowledge the fact. On
the other hand, and about the same time, a lovely damsel (ah!
Clorinda,) whose father was not wealthy, who had no prospective means
of support, who could do nothing but polka to perfection, who
literally knew almost nothing, and who constantly shocked every fairly
intelligent person by the glaring ignorance betrayed in her remarks,
informed a friend at one of the Saratoga balls, whither he had made
haste to meet “the best society,” that there were “not more than three
good matches in society!” _La Dame aux Camélias_, Marie
Duplessis, was, to our fancy, a much more feminine, and admirable, and
moral, and human person, than the adored Clorinda. And yet what she
said was the legitimate result of the state of our fashionable
society. It worships wealth, and the pomp which wealth can purchase,
more than virtue, genius, or beauty. We may be told that it has always
been so in every country, and that the fine society of all lands is as
profuse and flashy as our own. We deny it, flatly. Neither English,
nor French, nor Italian, nor German society, is so unspeakably barren
as that which is technically called “society” here. In London, and
Paris, and Vienna, and Rome, all the really eminent men and women help
make up the mass of society. A party is not a mere ball, but it is a
congress of the wit, beauty, and fame of the capital. It is worth
while to dress, if you shall meet Macaulay, or Hallam, or Guizot, or
Thiers, or Landseer, or Delaroche,--Mrs. Norton, the Misses Berry,
Madame Recamier, and all the brilliant women and famous
foreigners. But why should we desert the pleasant pages of those men,
and the recorded gossip of those women, to be squeezed flat against a
wall, while young Doughface pours oyster gravy down our shirt front,
and Carolina Pettitoes wonders at “Mr. Düsseldorf’s” industry?

If intelligent people decline to go, you justly remark, it is their
own fault. Yes, but if they stay away it is very certainly their great
gain. The elderly people are always neglected with us, and nothing
surprises intelligent strangers more, than the tyrannical supremacy of
Young America. But we are not surprised at this neglect. How can we be
if we have our eyes open? When Caroline Pettitoes retreats from the
floor to the sofa, and instead of a “polker” figures at parties as a
matron, do you suppose that “tough old Joes” like ourselves are going
to desert the young Caroline upon the floor, for Madame Pettitoes upon
the sofa? If the pretty young Caroline, with youth, health, freshness,
a fine, budding form, and wreathed in a semi-transparent haze of
flounced and flowered gauze, is so vapid that we prefer to accost her
with our eyes alone, and not with our tongues, is the same Caroline
married into a Madame Pettitoes, and fanning herself upon a sofa,--no
longer particularly fresh, nor young, nor pretty, and no longer
budding but very fully blown,--likely to be fascinating in
conversation? We cannot wonder that the whole connection of Pettitoes,
when advanced to the matron state, is entirely neglected. Proper
homage to age we can all pay at home, to our parents and
grandparents. Proper respect for some persons is best preserved by
avoiding their neighborhood.

And what, think you, is the influence of this extravagant expense and
senseless show upon these same young men and women? We can easily
discover. It saps their noble ambition, assails their health, lowers
their estimate of men and their reverence for women, cherishes an
eager and aimless rivalry, weakens true feeling, wipes away the bloom
of true modesty, and induces an ennui, a satiety, and a kind of
dilettante misanthropy, which is only the more monstrous because it is
undoubtedly real. You shall hear young men of intelligence and
cultivation, to whom the unprecedented circumstances of this country
offer opportunities of a great and beneficent career, complaining that
they were born within this blighted circle--regretting that they were
not bakers and tallow-chandlers, and under no obligation to keep up
appearances--deliberately surrendering all the golden possibilities of
that Future which this country, beyond all others, holds before
them--sighing that they are not rich enough to marry the girls they
love, and bitterly upbraiding fortune that they are not
millionnaires--suffering the vigor of their years to exhale in idle
wishes and pointless regrets--disgracing their manhood by lying in
wait behind their “so gentlemanly” and “aristocratic” manners, until
they can pounce upon a “fortune” and ensnare an heiress into
matrimony: and so having dragged their gifts, their horses of the sun,
into a service which shames out of them all their native pride and
power, they sink in the mire, and their peers and emulators exclaim
that they have “made a good thing of it.”

Are these the processes by which a noble race is made and perpetuated?
At Mrs. Potiphar’s we heard several Pendennises longing for a similar
luxury, and announcing their firm purpose, never to have wives, nor
houses, until they could have them as splendid as jewelled
Mrs. Potiphar, and her palace, thirty feet front. Where were their
heads and their hearts, and their arms? How looks this craven
despondency, before the stern virtues of the ages we call dark? When a
man is so voluntarily imbecile as to regret he is not rich, if that is
what he wants, before he has struck a blow for wealth; or so dastardly
as to renounce the prospect of love, because sitting sighing, in
velvet dressing-gown and slippers, he does not see his way clear to
ten thousand a year; when young women coiffed _à merveille_, of
unexceptionable “style,” who, with or without a prospective penny,
secretly look down upon honest women who struggle for their
livelihood, like noble and Christian beings, and, as such, are
rewarded; in whose society a man must forget that he has ever read,
thought or felt; who destroy in the mind, the fair ideal of woman,
which the genius of art and poetry, and love, their inspirer, has
created; then it seems to us, it is high time that the subject should
be regarded not as a matter of breaking butterflies upon the wheel,
but as a sad and sober question, in whose solution, all fathers and
mothers, and the state itself, are interested. When keen observers,
and men of the world, from Europe, are amazed and appalled at the
giddy whirl and frenzied rush of our society--a society singular in
history, for the exaggerated prominence it assigns to wealth,
irrespective of the talents that amassed it, they and their possessor
being usually hustled out of sight--is it not quite time to ponder a
little upon the Court of Louis XIV., and the “merrie days” of King
Charles II.? Is it not clear that, if what our good wag, with caustic
irony, called “best society,” were really such, every thoughtful man
would read upon Mrs. Potiphar’s softly-tinted walls, the terrible
“mene, mene” of imminent destruction?

Venice in her purple prime of luxury, when the famous law was passed,
making all gondolas black, that the nobles should not squander
fortunes upon them, was not more luxurious than New York today. Our
hotels have a superficial splendor, derived from a profusion of gilt
and paint, wood and damask. Yet, in not one of them can the traveller
be so quietly comfortable as in an English Inn, and nowhere in New
York can the stranger procure a dinner, at once so neat and elegant,
and economical, as at scores of Cafes in Paris. The fever of display
has consumed comfort. A gondola plated with gold was no easier than a
black wooden one. We could well spare a little gilt upon the walls,
for more cleanliness upon the public table; nor is it worth while to
cover the walls with mirrors to reflect a want of comfort, One prefers
a wooden bench to a greasy velvet cushion, and a sanded floor to a
soiled and threadbare carpet. An insipid uniformity is the
Procrustes-bed, upon which “society” is stretched. Every new house is
the counterpart of every other, with the exception of more gilt, if
the owner can afford it. The interior arrangement, instead of being
characteristic, instead of revealing something of the tastes and
feelings of the owner, is rigorously conformed to every other
interior. The same hollow and tame complaisance rules in the
intercourse of society. Who dares say precisely what he thinks upon a
great topic? What youth ventures to say sharp things, of slavery, for
instance, at a polite dinner-table? What girl dares wear curls, when
Martelle prescribes puffs or bandeaux? What specimen of young America
dares have his trowsers loose or wear straps to them? We want
individuality, heroism, and, if necessary, an uncompromising
persistence in difference.

This is the present state of parties. They are wildly extravagant,
full of senseless display; they are avoided by the pleasant and
intelligent, and swarm with reckless regiments of “Brown’s men.” The
ends of the earth contribute their choicest products to the supper,
and there is everything that wealth can purchase, and all the spacious
splendor that thirty feet front can afford. They are hot, and crowded,
and glaring. There is a little weak scandal, venomous, not witty, and
a stream of weary platitude, mortifying to every sensible person.
Will any of our Pendennis friends intermit their indignation for a
moment, and consider how many good things they have said or heard
during the season? If Mr. Potiphar’s eyes should chance to fall here,
will he reckon the amount of satisfaction and enjoyment he derived
from Mrs. Potiphar’s ball, and will that lady candidly confess what
she gained from it besides weariness and disgust? What eloquent
sermons we remember to have heard in which the sins and the sinners of
Babylon, Jericho and Gomorrah were scathed with holy indignation. The
cloth is very hard upon Cain, and completely routs the erring kings of
Judah. The Spanish Inquisition, too, gets frightful knocks, and there
is much eloquent exhortation to preach the gospel in the interior of
Siam. Let it be preached there, and God speed the word. But also let
us have a text or two in Broadway and the Avenue.

The best sermon ever preached upon society, within our knowledge, is
“Vanity Fair.” Is the spirit of that story less true of New York than
of London? Probably we never see Amelia at our parties, nor
Lieutenant George Osborne, nor good gawky Dobbin, nor Mrs. Rebecca
Sharp Crawley, nor old Steyne. We are very much pained, of course,
that any author should take such dreary views of human nature. We,
for our parts, all go to Mrs. Potiphar’s to refresh our faith in men
and women. Generosity, amiability, a catholic charity, simplicity,
taste, sense, high cultivation, and intelligence, distinguish our
parties. The statesman seeks their stimulating influence; the literary
man, after the day’s labour, desires the repose of their elegant
conversation; the professional man and the merchant hurry up from down
town to shuffle off the coil of heavy duty, and forget the drudgery of
life in the agreeable picture of its amenities and graces presented by
Mrs. Potiphar’s ball. Is this account of the matter, or “Vanity
Fair,” the satire? What are the prospects of any society of which that
tale is the true history? There is a picture in the Luxembourg
gallery at Paris, “The Decadence of the Romans,” which made the fame
and fortune of Couture, the painter. It represents an orgie in the
court of a temple, during the last days of Rome. A swarm of revellers
occupy the middle of the picture, wreathed in elaborate intricacy of
luxurious posture, men and women intermingled; their faces, in which
the old Roman fire scarcely flickers, brutalized with excess of every
kind; their heads of dishevelled hair bound with coronals of leaves,
while, from goblets of an antique grace, they drain the fiery torrent
which is destroying them. Around the bacchanalian feast stand, lofty
upon pedestals, the statues of old Rome, looking with marble calmness
and the severity of a rebuke beyond words upon the revellers. A youth
of boyish grace, with a wreath woven in his tangled hair, and with red
and drowsy eyes, sits listless upon one pedestal, while upon another
stands a boy, insane with drunkenness, and proffering a dripping
goblet to the marble mouth of the statue. In the corner of the
picture, as if just quitting the court--Rome finally departing--is a
group of Romans with care-worn brows, and hands raised to their faces
in melancholy meditation. In the foreground of the picture, which is
painted with all the sumptuous splendor of Venetian art, is a stately
vase, around which hangs a festoon of gorgeous flowers, its end
dragging upon the pavement. In the background, between the columns,
smiles the blue sky of Italy--the only thing Italian not deteriorated
by time. The careful student of this picture, if he has been long in
Paris, is some day startled by detecting, especially in the faces of
the women represented, a surprising likeness to the women of Paris,
and perceives, with a thrill of dismay, that the models for this
picture of decadent human nature are furnished by the very city in
which he lives.





II. -- OUR NEW LIVERY, AND OTHER THINGS.


A LETTER FROM MRS. POTIPHAR TO MISS CAROLINE
PETTITOES.

NEW YORK, _April._

MY DEAR CAROLINE,--Lent came so frightfully early this year, that I
was very much afraid my new bonnet _à l’Imperatrice_ would not be
out from Paris soon enough. But fortunately it arrived just in time,
and I had the satisfaction of taking down the pride of Mrs. Croesus,
who fancied hers would be the only stylish hat in church the first
Sunday. She could not keep her eyes away from me, and I sat so
unmoved, and so calmly looking at the Doctor, that she was quite
vexed. But, whenever she turned away, I ran my eyes over the whole
congregation, and would you believe that, almost without an exception,
people had their old things? However, I suppose they forgot how soon
Lent was coming. As I was passing out of church, Mrs. Croesus brushed
by me:

“Ah!” said she, “good morning. Why bless me! you’ve got that pretty
hat I saw at Lawson’s. Well, now, it’s really quite pretty; Lawson has
some taste left yet; what a lovely sermon the Doctor gave us. By the
by, did you know that Mrs. Gnu had actually bought the blue velvet?
It’s too bad, because I wanted to cover my prayer-book with blue, and
she sits so near, the effect of my book will be quite spoiled. Dear
me! there she is beckoning to me; good-bye, do come and see us;
Tuesdays, you know. Well, Lawson really does very well.”

I was so mad with the old thing, that I could not help catching her by
her mantle and holding on while I whispered loud enough for everybody
to hear:

“Mrs. Croesus, you see I have just got my bonnet from Paris. It’s made
after the Empress’s. If you would like to have yours made over in the
fashion, dear Mrs. Croesus, I shall be so glad to lend you mine.”

“No, thank you, dear,” said she, “Lawson won’t do for me. Bye-bye.”

And so she slipped out, and, I’ve no doubt, told Mrs. Gnu that she had
seen my bonnet at Lawson’s. Isn’t it too bad? Then she is so
abominably cool. Somehow, when I am talking with Mrs. Croesus, who
has all her own things made at home, I don’t feel as if mine came from
Paris at all. She has such a way of looking at you, that it’s quite
dreadful. She seems to be saying in her mind, “La! now, well done,
little dear.” And I think that kind of mental reservation (I think
that’s what they call it) is an insupportable impertinence. However, I
don’t care, do you?

I’ve so many things to tell you that I hardly know where to begin. The
great thing is the livery, but I want to come regularly up to that,
and forget nothing by the way. I was uncertain for a long time how to
have my prayer-book bound. Finally, after thinking about it a great
deal, I concluded to have it done in pale blue velvet, with gold
clasps, and a gold cross upon the side. To be sure, it’s nothing very
new. But what _is_ new now-a-days? Sally Shrimp has had hers done
in emerald, and I know Mrs. Croesus will have crimson for hers, and
those people who sits next us in church (I wonder who they are; it’s
very unpleasant to sit next to people you don’t know; and, positively,
that girl, the dark-haired one with large eyes, carries the same muff
she did last year; it’s big enough for a family) have a kind of brown
morocco binding. I must tell you one reason why I fixed upon the
pale-blue. You know that aristocratic-looking young man, in white
cravat and black pantaloons and waistcoat, whom we saw at Saratoga a
year ago, and who always had such a beautiful sanctimonious look, and
such small white hands; well, he is a minister, as we supposed, “an
unworthy candidate, and unprofitable husbandman,” as he calls himself
in that delicious voice of his. He has been quite taken up among
us. He has been asked a good deal to dinner, and there was hope of his
being settled as colleague to the Doctor, only Mr. Potiphar (who can
be stubborn, you know) insisted that the Rev. Cream Cheese, though a
very good young man, he didn’t doubt, was addicted to candlesticks. I
suppose that’s something awful. But, could you believe anything awful
of him? I asked Mr. Potiphar what he meant by saying such things.

“I mean,” said he, “that he’s a Puseyite, and I’ve no idea of being
tied to the apron-strings of the Scarlet Woman.”

Dear Caroline, who _is_ the Scarlet Woman? Dearest, tell me,
upon your honor, if you have ever heard any scandal of Mr. Potiphar?

“What is it about candlesticks?” said I to Mr. Potiphar. “Perhaps
Mr. Cheese finds gas too bright for his eyes; and that’s his
misfortune, not his fault.

“Polly,” said Mr. Potiphar, who _will_ call me Polly, although it
sounds so very vulgar, “please not to meddle with things you don’t
understand. You may have Cream Cheese to dinner as much as you
choose, but I will not have him in the pulpit of my church.”

The same day Mr. Cheese happened in about lunch-time, and I asked him
if his eyes were really weak.

“Not at all,” said he, “why do you ask?”

Then I told him that I had heard he was so fond of candlesticks.

Ah! Caroline, you should have seen him then. He stopped in the midst
of pouring out a glass of Mr. P.’s best old port, and holding the
decanter in one hand, and the glass in the other, he looked so
beautifully sad, and said in that sweet low voice:

“Dear Mrs. Potiphar, the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the
church.” Then he filled up his glass, and drank the wine off with such
a mournful, resigned air, and wiped his lips so gently with his
cambric handkerchief (I saw that it was a hem-stitch), that I had no
voice to ask him to take a bit of the cold chicken, which he did,
however, without my asking him. But when he said in the same low
voice, “A little more breast, dear Mrs. Potiphar,” I was obliged to
run into the drawing room for a moment, to recover myself.

Well, after he had lunched I told him that I wished to take his advice
upon something connected with the church, (for a prayer-book
_is,_ you know, dear,) and he looked so sweetly at me, that,
would you believe it, I almost wished to be a Catholic, and to confess
three or four times a week, and to have him for my confessor. But it’s
very wicked to wish to be a Catholic, and it wasn’t real much, you
know; but somehow I thought so. When I asked him in what velvet he
would advise me to have my prayer-book bound, he talked beautifully
for about twenty minutes. I wish you could have heard him. I’m not
sure that I understood much of what he said--how should I?--but it
was very beautiful. Don’t laugh, Carrie, but there was one thing I
did understand, and which, as it came pretty often, quite helped me
through: it was, “Dear Mrs. Potiphar;” you can’t tell how nicely he
says it. He began by telling me that it was very important to consider
all the details and little things about the church. He said they were
all Timbales or Cymbals--or something of that kind; and then he
talked very prettily about the stole, and the violet and scarlet capes
of the cardinals, and purple chasubles, and the lace edge of the
Pope’s little short gown; and--do you know it was very funny--but it
seemed to me, somehow, as if I was talking with Portier or Florine
Lefevre, except that he used such beautiful words. Well, by and by, he
said:--

“Therefore, dear Mrs. Potiphar, as your faith is so pure and
childlike, and as I observe that the light from the yellow panes
usually falls across your pew, I would advise that you cymbalize your
faith (wouldn’t that be noisy in church?) by binding your prayer-book
in pale blue; the color of skim-milk, dear Mrs. Potiphar, which is so
full of pastoral associations.”

Why did he emphasize the word “pastoral?” Do you wonder that I like
Cream Cheese, dear Caroline, when he is so gentle and religious--and
such a pretty religion too! For he is not only well-dressed, and has
such aristocratic hands and feet, in the parlor, but he is so
perfectly gentlemanly in the pulpit. He never raises his voice too
loud, and he has such wavy gestures. Mr. Potiphar says that may be all
very true, but he knows perfectly well that he has a hankering for
artificial flowers, and that, for his part, he prefers the Doctor to
any preacher he ever heard “because,” he says, “I can go quietly to
sleep, confident that he will say nothing that might not be preached
from every well-regulated pulpit; whereas, if we should let Cream
Cheese into the desk, I should have to keep awake to be on the
look-out for some of these new-fangled idolatries: and, Polly
Potiphar, I, for one, am determined to have nothing to do with the
Scarlet Woman.”

Darling Caroline--I don’t care much--but did he ever have anything to
do with a Scarlet Woman?

After he said that about artificial flowers, I ordered from Martelle
the sweetest sprig of _immortelle_ he had in his shop, and sent
it anonymously on St. Valentine’s day. Of course I didn’t wish to do
anything secret from my husband, that might make people talk, so I
wrote--“Rev. Cream Cheese; from his grateful _Skim-milk._” I
marked the last words, and hope he understood that I meant to express
my thanks for his advice about the pale-blue cover. You don’t think it
was too romantice, do you, dear?

You can imagine how pleasantly Lent is passing since I see so much of
him: and then it is so appropriate to Lent to be intimate with a
minister. He goes with me to church a great deal; for Mr. Potiphar, of
course, has no time for that, except on Sundays; and it is really
delightful to see such piety. He makes the responses in the most
musical manner; and when he kneels upon entering the pew, he is the
admiration of the whole church. He buries his face entirely in a cloud
of cambric pocket-handkerchief, with his initial embroidered at the
corner; and his hair is beautifully parted down behind, which is very
fortunate, as otherwise it would look so badly, when only half his
head showed. I feel _so_ good when I sit by his side; and when
the Doctor (as Mr. P. says) “blows up” those terrible sinners in
Babylon and the other Bible towns, I always find the Rev. Cream’s eyes
fixed upon me, with so much sweet sadness, that I am very, very sorry
for the naughty people the Doctor talks about. Why did they do so, do
you suppose, dear Caroline? How thankful we ought to be that we live
now with so many churches, and such fine ones, and with such
gentlemanly ministers as Mr. Cheese. And how nicely it’s arranged
that, after dancing and dining for two or three months constantly,
during which, of course, we can only go to church Sundays, there comes
a time for stopping, when we’re tired out, and for going to church
every day, and (as Mr. P. says) “striking a balance;” and thinking
about being good, and all those things. We don’t lose a great deal,
you know. It makes a variety, and we all see each other, just the
same, only we don’t dance. I do think it would be better if we took
our lorgnettes with us, however, for it was only last Wednesday, at
nine o’clock prayers, that I saw Sheena Silke across the church in
their little pew at the corner, and I am sure that she had a new
bonnet on; and yet, though I looked at it all the time trying to find
out, prayers were fairly over before I discovered whether it was
really new, or only that old white one made over with a few new
flowers. Now, if I had had my glass, I could have told in a moment,
and shouldn’t have been obliged to lose all the prayers.

But, as I was saying, those poor old people in Babylon and Nineveh!
only think, if they had had the privileges of prayers for six or seven
weeks in Lent, and regular preaching the rest of the year, except, of
course, in the summer--(by the by, I wonder if they all had some kind
of Saratoga or Newport to go to?--I mean to ask Mr. Cheese)--they
might have been good, and all have been happy. It’s quite awful to
hear how eloquent and earnest the Doctor is when he preaches against
Babylon. Mr. P. says he likes to have him “pitch into those old
sinners; it does ‘em so much good;” and then he looks quite
fierce. Mr. Cheese is going to read me a sermon he has written upon
the maidenhood of Lot’s wife. He says that he quotes a great deal of
poetry in it, and that I must _dam_ up the fount of my tears when
he reads it. It was an odd expression for a minister, wasn’t it? and I
was obliged to say, “Mr. Cheese, you forget yourself.” He replied,
“Dear Mrs. Potiphar, I will explain;” and he did so; so that I admired
him more than ever.

Dearest Caroline,--if you should only like him! He asked one day
about you; and when I told him what a dear, good girl you are, he
said: “And her father has worldly possessions, has he not?”

I answered, yes; that your father was very rich. Then he sighed, and
said that he could never marry an heiress unless he clearly saw it to
be his duty. Isn’t it a beautiful resignation?

I had no idea of saying so much about him, but you know it’s proper,
when writing a letter in Lent, to talk about religious matters. And, I
must confess, there is something comfortable in having to do with such
things. Don’t you feel better, when you’ve been dancing all the week,
and dining, and going to the opera, and flirting and flying around, to
go to church on Sundays? I do. It seems, somehow, as if we ought to
go. But I do wish Mrs. Croesus would sit somewhere else than just in
front of us, for her new bonnets and her splendid collars and capes
makes me quite miserable: and then she puts me out of conceit of my
things by talking about Lawson, or somebody, as I told you in the
beginning.

Mr. Potiphar has sent out for the new carpets. I had only two spoiled
at my ball, you know, and that was very little. One always expects to
sacrifice at least two carpets upon occasion of seeing one’s friends.
That handsome one in the supper room was entirely ruined. Would you
believe that Mr. P. when he went downstairs the next morning, found
our Fred and his cousin hoeing it with their little toes? It was
entirely matted with preserves and things, and the boys said that they
were scraping it clean for breakfast. The other spoiled carpet was in
the gentlemen’s dressing-room where the punch-bowl was. Young Gauche
Boosey, a very gentlemanly fellow, you know, ran up after polking, and
was so confused with the light and heat that he went quite unsteadily,
and as he was trying to fill a glass with the silver ladle (which is
rather heavy), he somehow leaned too hard upon the table, and down
went the whole thing, table, bowl, punch, and Boosey, and ended my
poor carpet. I was sorry for that, and also for the bowl, which was a
very handsome one, imported from China by my father’s partner--a
wedding gift to me--and for the table, a delicate rosewood stand,
which was a work table of my sister Lucy’s--whom you never knew, and
who died long and long ago. However, I was amply repaid by Boosey’s
drollery afterward. He is a very witty young man, and when he got up
from the floor, saturated with punch (his clothes I mean), he looked
down at the carpet and said:

“Well, I’ve given that such a punch it will want some _lemon-aid_
to recover.”

I suppose he had some idea about lemon acid taking out spots.

But, the best thing was what he said to me. He is so droll that he
insisted upon coming down, and finishing the dance just as he was. The
funny fellow brushed against all the dresses in his way, and, finally
said to me, as he pointed to a lemon-seed upon his coat:

“I feel so very _lemon-choly_ for what I have done.”

I laughed very much (you were in the other room), but Mr. P. stepped
up and ordered him to leave the house. Boosey said he would do no such
thing; and I have no doubt we should have had a scene, if Mr. P. had
not marched him straight to the door, and put him into a carriage, and
told the driver where to take him. Mr. P. was red enough when he came
back.

“No man shall insult me or my guests, by getting drunk in my house,”
 said he; and he has since asked me not to invite Boosey nor “any of
his kind,” as he calls them, to our house. However, I think it will
pass over. I tell him that all young men of spirit get a little
excited with wine sometimes, and he mustn’t be too hard upon them.

“Madame,” said he to me, the first time I ventured to say that, “no
man with genuine self-respect ever gets drunk twice; and, if you had
the faintest idea of the misery which a little elegant intoxication
has produced in scores of families that you know, you would never
insinuate again that a little excitement from wine is an agreeable
thing. There’s your friend Mrs. Croesus (he thinks she’s my friend,
because we call each other ‘dear’!); she is delighted to be a
fashionable woman, and to be described as the ‘peerless and
accomplished Mrs. Croesus’ in letters from the Watering-places to the
Herald; but I tell you, if anything of the woman or the mother is left
in the fashionable Mrs. Croesus, I could wring her heart as it never
was wrung--and never shall be by me--by showing her the places that
young Timon Croesus haunts, the people with whom he associates and the
drunkenness, gambling, and worse dissipations of which he is guilty.

“Timon Croesus is eighteen or nineteen, or, perhaps, twenty years old;
and Polly, I tell you, he is actually _blasé_, worn out with
dissipation, the companion of blacklegs, the chevalier of Cyprians,
tipsy every night, and haggard every morning. Timon Croesus is the
puny caricature of a man, mentally, morally, and physically. He gets
‘elegantly intoxicated’ at your parties; he goes off to sup with
Gauche Boosey; you and Mrs. Croesus think them young men of
spirit,--it is an exhilarating case of sowing wildcats, you
fancy,--and, when, at twenty-five, Timon Croesus stands ruined in the
world, without aims or capacities, without the esteem of a single man
or his own self-respect--youth, health, hope, and energy, all gone
forever--then you and your dear Mrs. Croesus will probably wonder at
the horrible harvest. Mrs. Potiphar, ask the Rev. Cream Cheese to omit
his sermon upon the maidenhood of Lot’s wife, and preach from this
text: ‘They that sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind.’ Good heavens!
Polly, fancy our Fred growing up to such a life! I’d rather bury him
to-morrow!”

I never saw Mr. P. so much excited. He fairly put his handkerchief to
his eyes, and I really believe he cried! But I think he exaggerates
these things: and as he had a very dear friend that went worse and
worse, until he died frightfully, a drunkard, it is not strange he
should speak so warmly about it. But as Mrs. Croesus says:

“What can you do? You can’t curb these boys, you don’t want to break
their spirits, you don’t want to make them milk-sops.”

When I repeated this speech to Mr. P., he said to me with a kind of
solemnity:

“Tell Mrs. Croesus that I am not here to judge nor dictate: but she
may be well assured, that every parent is responsible for every child
of his to the utmost of the influence he can exert, whether he chooses
to consider himself so or not; and if not now, in this world, yet
somewhere and somehow, he must hear and heed the voice that called to
Cain in the garden, ‘Where is Abel, thy brother?’”

I can’t bear to hear Mr.P. talk in that way; it sounds so like
preaching. Not precisely like what I hear at church but like what we
mean when we say “preaching,” without referring to any particular
sermon. However, he grants that young Timon is an extreme case: but,
he says, it is the result that proves the principle, and a state of
feeling which not only allows, but indirectly fosters, that result, is
frightful to think of.

“Don’t think of it then, Mr. P.,” said I. He looked at me for a moment
with the sternest scowl I ever saw upon a man’s face, then he suddenly
ran up to me, and kissed me on the forehead (although my hair was all
dressed for Mrs. Gnu’s dinner), and went out of the house. He hasn’t
said much to me since, but he speaks very gently when he does speak,
and sometimes I catch him looking at me in such a singular way, so
half mournful, that Mr. Cheese’s eyes don’t seem so very sad after
all.

However, to return to the party, I believe nothing else was injured
except the curtains in the front drawing-room, which were so smeared
with ice-cream and oyster gravy, that we must get new ones; and the
cover of my porcelain tureen was broken by the servant, though the man
said he didn’t really mean to do it, and I could say nothing; and a
party of young men, after the German Cotillion, did let fall that
superb cut-glass Claret, and shivered it, with a dozen of the
delicately engraved straw-stems that stood upon the waiter. That was
all, I believe--oh! except that fine “Dresden Gallery,” the most
splendid book I ever saw, full of engravings of the great pictures in
Dresden, Vienna, and the other Italian towns, and which was sent to
Mr. P. by an old friend, an artist, whom he had helped along when he
was very poor. Somebody unfortunately tipped over a bottle of claret
that stood upon the table, (I am sure I don’t know how it got there,
though Mr. P. says Gauche Boosey knows,) and it lay soaking into the
book, so that almost every picture has a claret stain, which looks so
funny. I am very sorry, I am sure, but as I tell Mr. P., it’s no use
crying for spilt milk. I was telling Mr. Boosey of it at the Gnus’
dinner. He laughed very much, and when I said that a good many of the
faces were sadly stained, he said in his droll way, “You ought to call
it _L’Opera di Bordeaux; Le Domino rouge._” I supposed it was
something funny, so I laughed a good deal. He said to me later: “Shall
I pour a little claret into your book--I mean into your glass?”

Wasn’t it a pretty _bon-mot?_

Don’t you think we are getting very _spirituel_ in this country?

I believe there was nothing else injured except the bed-hangings in
the back room, which were somehow badly burnt and very much torn in
pulling down, and a few of our handsomest shades that were cracked by
the heat, and a few plates, which it was hardly fair to expect
wouldn’t be broken, and the colored glass door in my _escritoire_,
against which Flattie Podge fell as she was dancing with Gauche Boosey;
but he may have been a little excited, you know, and she, poor girl,
couldn’t help tumbling, and as her head hit the glass, of course, it
broke, and cut her head badly, so that the blood ran down and naturally
spoiled her dress; and what little _escritoire_ could stand against
Flattie Podge? So that went, and was a good deal smashed in falling.
That’s all, I think, except that the next day Mrs. Croesus sent a note,
saying that she had lost her largest diamond from her necklace, and she
was sure that it was not in the carriage, nor in her own house, nor
upon the sidewalk, for she had carefully looked everywhere, _and
she would be very glad if I would return it by the bearer._

Think of that.

Well, we hunted everywhere, and found no diamond. I took particular
pains to ask the servants if they had found it, for if they had, they
might as well give it up at once, without expecting any reward from
Mrs. Croesus, who wasn’t very generous. But they all said they hadn’t
found any diamond: and our man John, who you know is so
guileless,--although it _was_ a little mysterious about that
emerald pin of mine,--brought me a bit of glass that had been nicked
out of my large custard dish, and asked me if that was not
Mrs. Croesus’s diamond. I told him no, and gave him a gold dollar for
his honesty. John is an invaluable servant; he is so guileless.

_Do you know I am not so sure about Mrs. Croesus’s diamond!_

Mr. P. made a great howling about the ball. But it was very foolish,
for he got safely to bed by six o’clock, and he need have no trouble
about replacing the curtains, and glass, etc. I shall do all that, and
the sum total will be sent to him in a lump, so that he can pay it.

Men are so unreasonable. Fancy us at seven o’clock that morning, when
I retired. He wasn’t asleep. But whose fault was that?

“Polly,” said he, “that’s the last.”

“Last what?” said I. -- “Last ball at my house,” said he.

“Fiddle-dee-dee,” said I. -- “I tell you, Mrs. Potiphar, I am not going to open my house for a
crowd of people who don’t go away till daylight; who spoil my books
and furniture; involve me in a foolish expense; for a gang of rowdy
boys, who drink my Margaux, and Lafitte, and Marcobrunner, (what kind
of drinks are those, dear Caroline?) and who don’t know Chambertin
from liquorice-water,--for a swarm of persons few of whom we know
fewer, still care for me, and to whom I am only ‘Old Potiphar,’ the
husband of you, a fashionable woman. I am simply resolved to have no
more such tomfoolery in my house.”

“Dear Mr. P.,” said I, “you’ll feel much better when you have
slept. Besides, why do you say such things? Mustn’t we see our
friends, I should like to know; and if we do, are you going to let
your wife receive them in a manner inferior to old Mrs. Podge or
Mrs. Croesus? People will accuse you of meanness, and of treating me
ill; and if some persons hear that you have reduced your style of
living, they will begin to suspect the state of your affairs. Don’t
make any rash vows, Mr. P.,” said I, “but go to sleep.”

(Do you know that speech was just what Mrs. Croesus told me she had
said to her husband under similar circumstances?)

Mr. P. fairly groaned, and I heard that short, strong little word that
sometimes inadvertently drops out of the best regulated mouths, as
young Gooseberry Downe says when he swears before his mother. Do you
know Mrs. Settum Downe? Charming woman, but satirical.

Mr. P. groaned, and said some more ill-natured things, until the clock
struck nine, and he was obliged to get up. I should be sorry to say to
anybody but you, dearest, that I was rather glad of it; for I could
then fall asleep at my ease; and these little connubial felicities (I
think they call them) are so tiresome. But everybody agreed it was a
beautiful ball; and I had the great gratification of hearing young
Lord Mount Ague (you know you danced with him, love) say that it was
quite the same thing as a ball at Buckingham Palace, except, of
course, in size, and the number of persons, and dresses, and jewels,
and the plate, and glass, and supper, and wines, and furnishing of the
rooms, and lights, and some of those things, which are naturally upon
a larger scale at a palace than in a private house. But, he said,
excepting such things, it was quite as fine. I am afraid that Lord
Mount Ague flatters; just a little bit you know.

Yes; and there was young Major Staggers, who said that “Decidedly it
was _the_ party of the season.”

“How odd,” said Mrs. Croesus, to whom I told it, and, I confess, with
a little pride. “What a sympathetic man: that is, for a military man,
I mean. Would you believe, dear Mrs. Potiphar, that he said precisely
the same thing to me two days after my ball?”

Now, Caroline, dearest, _perhaps_ he did!

With all these pleasant things said about one’s party, I cannot see
that it is such a dismal thing as Mr. P. tries to make out. After one
of his solemn talks, I asked Mr. Cheese what he thought of balls,
whether it was so very wicked to dance, and go to parties, if one only
went to church twice a day on Sundays. He patted his lips a moment
with his handkerchief, and then he said,--and, Caroline, you can
always quote the Rev. Cream Cheese as authority,--

“Dear Mrs. Potiphar, it is recorded in Holy Scripture that the King
danced before the Lord.”

Darling, _if anything should happen,_ I don’t believe
he would object much to our dancing.

What gossips we women are, to be sure! I meant to write you about our
new livery and I am afraid I have tired you out already. You remember
when you were here, I said that I meant to have a livery, for my
sister Margaret told me that when they used to drive in Hyde Park,
with the old Marquis of Mammon, it was always so delightful to hear
him say, “Ah! there is Lady Lobster’s livery.”

It was so aristocratic. And in countries where certain colors
distinguish certain families, and are hereditary, so to say, it is
convenient and pleasant to recognize a coat-of-arms, or a livery, and
to know that the representative of a great and famous family is
passing by.

“That’s a Howard, that’s a Eussell, that’s a Dorset, that’s de
Colique, that’s Mount Ague,” old Lord Mammon used to say as the
carriages whirled by. He knew none of them personally, I believe,
except de Colique and Mount Ague, but then it was so agreeable to be
able to know their liveries.

Now why shouldn’t we have the same arrangement? Why not have the
Smith colors, and the Brown colors, and the Black colors, and the
Potiphar colors, etc., so that the people might say, “Ah! there goes
the Potiphar arms.”

There is one difficulty, Mr. P. says, and that is, that he found five
hundred and sixty-seven Smiths in the Directory, which might lead to
some confusion. But that was absurd, as I told him, because everybody
would know which of the Smiths was able to keep a carriage, so that
the livery would be recognized directly the moment that any of the
family were seen in a carriage. Upon which he said, in his provoking
way, “Why have any livery at all, then?” and he persisted in saying
that no Smith was ever _the_ Smith for three generations, and
that he knew at least twenty, each of whom was able to set up his
carriage and stand by his colors.

“But then a livery is so elegant and aristocratic,” said I, “and it
shows that a servant is a servant.”

That last was a strong argument, and I thought Mr. P. would have
nothing to say against it; but he rattled on for some time, asking me
what right I had to be aristocratic, or, in fact, anybody else;--went
over his eternal old talk about aping foreign habits, as if we hadn’t
a right to adopt the good usages of all nations, and finally said that
the use of liveries among us was not only a “pure peacock absurdity,”
 as he called it, but that no genuine American would ever ask another
to assume a menial badge.

“Why!” said I, “is not an American servant a servant still?”

“Most undoubtedly,” he said; “and when a man is a servant, let him
serve faithfully; and in this country especially, where to-morrow he
may be served, and not the servant, let him not be ashamed of
serving. But, Mrs. Potiphar, I beg you to observe that a servant’s
livery is not, like a general’s uniform the badge of honorable
service, but of menial service. Of course, a servant may be as
honorable as a general, and his work quite as necessary and well
done. But, for all that, it is not so respected nor coveted a
situation, I believe; and, in social estimation, a man suffers by
wearing a livery, as he never would if he wore none. And while in
countries in which a man is proud of being a servant (as every man may
well be of being a good one), and never looks to anything else, nor
desires any change, a livery may be very proper to the state of
society, and very agreeable to his own feelings, it is quite another
thing in a society constituted upon altogether different principles,
where the servant of to-day is the senator of to-morrow. Besides that,
which I suppose is too fine-spun for you, livery is a remnant of a
feudal state, of which we abolish every trace as fast as we can. That
which is represented by livery is not consonant with our principles.”

How the man runs on, when he gets going this way! I said, in answer to
all this flourish, that I considered a livery very much the thing;
that European families had liveries and American families might have
liveries;--that there was an end of it, and I meant to have
one. Besides if it is a matter of family, I should like to know who
has a better right? There was Mr. Potiphar’s grandfather, to be sure,
was only a skilful blacksmith and a good citizen, as Mr. P. says, who
brought up a family in the fear of the Lord.

How oddly he puts those things!

But _my_ ancestors, as you know, are a different matter. Starr
Mole, who interests himself in genealogies, and knows the family name
and crest of all the English nobility, has “climbed our family tree,”
 as Staggers says, and finds that I am lineally descended from one of
those two brothers who came over in some of those old times, in some
of those old ships, and settled in some of those old places somewhere.
So you see, dear Caroline, if birth gives any one a right to coats of
arms and liveries, and all those things, I feel myself sufficiently
entitled to have them.

But I don’t care anything about that. The Gnus, and Croesuses, and
Silkes, and the Settum Downes, have their coats of arms, and crests,
and liveries, and I am not going to be behind, I tell you. Mr. P.
ought to remember that a great many of these families were famous
before they came to this country; and there is a kind of interest in
having on your ring, for instance, the same crest that your ancestor
two or three centuries ago had upon her ring. One day I was quite
wrought up about the matter, and I said as much to him.

“Certainly,” said he, “certainly; you are quite right. If I had Sir
Philip Sidney to my ancestor, I should wear his crest upon my ring,
and glory in my relationship, and I hope I should be a better man for
it. I wouldn’t put his arms upon my carriage, however, because that
would mean nothing but ostentation. It would be merely a flourish of
trumpets to say that I was his descendant, and nobody would know that,
either, if my name chanced to be Boggs. In my library I might hang a
copy of the family escutcheon as a matter of interest and curiosity to
myself, for I’m sure I shouldn’t understand it. Do you suppose
Mrs. Gnu knows what _gules argent_ are? A man may be as proud of
his family as he chooses, and, if he has noble ancestors, with good
reason. But there is no sense in parading that pride. It is an
affectation, the more foolish that it achieves nothing--no more credit
at Stewart’s--no more real respect in society. Besides, Polly, who
were Mrs. Gnu’s ancestors, or Mrs. Croesus’s, or Mrs. Settum Downe’s?
Good, quiet, honest, and humble people, who did their work, and rest
from their labors. Centuries ago, in England, some drops of blood
from ‘noble’ veins may have mingled with the blood of the forefathers;
or even, the founder of the family name may be historically
famous. What then? Is Mrs. Gnu’s family ostentation less absurd? Do
you understand the meaning of her crest, and coats of arms, and
liveries? Do you suppose she does herself? But in forty-nine cases out
of fifty, there is nothing but a similarity of name upon which to
found all this flourish of aristocracy.”

My dear old Pot is getting rather prosy, Carrie. So when he had
finished that long speech, during which I was looking at the lovely
fashion plates in Harper, I said:

“What colors do you think I’d better have?”

He looked at me with that singular expression, and went out suddenly,
as if he were afraid he might say something.

He had scarcely gone before I heard:

“My dear Mrs. Potiphar, the sight of you is refreshing as Hermon’s
dew.”

I colored a little; Mr. Cheese says such things so softly. But I said
good morning, and then asked him about liveries, etc.

He raised his hand to his cravat, (it was the most snowy lawn, Carrie,
and tied in a splendid bow.)

“Is not this a livery, dear Mrs. Potiphar?”

And then he went off into one of those pretty talks, in what
Mr. P. calls the “language of artificial flowers,” and wound up by
quoting Scripture,--“Servants, obey your masters.”

That was enough for me. So I told Mr. Cheese that as he had already
assisted me in colors once, I should be most glad to have him do so
again. What a time we had, to be sure, talking of colors, and cloths,
and gaiters, and buttons, and knee-breeches, and waistcoats, and
plush, and coats, and lace, and hatbands, and gloves, and cravats, and
cords, and tassels, and hats. Oh! it was delightful. You can’t fancy
how heartily the Rev. Cream entered into the matter. He was quite
enthusiastic, and at last he said, with so much expression, “Dear
Mrs. Potiphar, why not have a _chasseur?_”

I thought it was some kind of French dish for lunch, so I said:

“I am so sorry, but we haven’t any in the house.”

“Oh,” said he, “but you could hire one, you know.”

Then I thought it must be a musical instrument--a Panharmonicon, or
something of that kind, so I said in a general way--

“I am not very, very fond of it.”

“But it would be so fine to have him standing on the back of the
carriage, his plumes waving in the wind, and his lace and polished
belts flashing in the sun, as you whirled down Broadway.”

Of course I knew then that he was speaking of those military gentlemen
who ride behind carriages, especially upon the Continent, as Margaret
tells me, and who in Paris are very useful to keep the savages and
wild beasts at bay in the _Champ Elysees_, for you know they are
intended as a guard.

But I knew Mr. P. would be firm about that, so I asked Mr. Cheese not
to kindle my imagination with the _Chasseur_.

We concluded finally to have only one full-sized footman, and a fat
driver.

“The corpulence is essential, dear Mrs. Potiphar,” said Mr. Cheese. “I
have been much abroad; I have mingled, I trust, in good, which is to
say, Christian society: and I must say, that few things struck me more
upon my return than that the ladies who drive very handsome carriages,
with footmen, etc., in livery, should permit such thin coachmen upon
the box. I really believe that Mrs. Settum Downe’s coachman doesn’t
weigh more than a hundred and thirty pounds, which is ridiculous. A
lady might as well hire a footman with insufficient calves, as a
coachman who weighs less than two hundred and ten. That is the
minimum. Besides, I don’t observe any wigs upon the coachmen. Now, if
a lady sets up her carriage with the family crest and fine liveries,
why, I should like to know, is the wig of the coachman omitted, and
his cocked hat also? It is a kind of shabby, half-ashamed way of doing
things--a garbled glory. The cock-hatted, knee-breeched,
paste-buckled, horse-hair-wigged coachman, one of the institutions of
the aristocracy. If we don’t have him complete, we somehow make
ourselves ridiculous. If we do have him complete, why then”--

Here Mr. Cheese coughed a little, and patted his mouth with his
cambric. But what he said was very true. I _should_ like to come
out with the wig--I mean upon the coachman; it would so put down the
Settum Downes. But I’m sure old Pot wouldn’t have it. He lets me do a
great deal. But there is a line which I feel he won’t let me pass. I
mentioned my fears to Mr. Cheese.

“Well,” he said, “Mr. Potiphar may be right. I remember an expression
of my carnal days about ‘coming it too strong.’ which seems to me to
be applicable just here.”

After a little more talk, I determined to have red plush breeches,
with a black cord at the side--white stockings--low shoes with large
buckles--a yellow waistcoat, with large buttons--lappels to the
pockets--and a purple coat, very full and fine, bound with gold
lace--and the hat banded with a full gold rogette. Don’t you think
that would look well in Hyde Park? And, darling Carrie, why shouldn’t
we have in Broadway what they have in Hyde Park?

When Mr. P. came in, I told him all about it. He laughed a good deal,
and said, “What next?” So I am not sure that he would be so very hard
upon the wig. The next morning I had appointed to see the new footman,
and as Mr. P. went out he turned and said to me, “Is your footman
coming to-day?”

“Yes,” I answered.

“Well,” said he, “don’t forget the calves. You know that everything in
the matter of livery depends upon the calves.”

And he went out laughing silently to himself, with--actually,
Carrie--a tear in his eye.

But it was true, wasn’t it? I remember in all the books and pictures
how much is said about the calves. In advertisements, etc., it is
stated that none but well-developed calves need apply, at least it is
so in England, and, if I have a livery, I am not going to stop
half-way. My duty was very clear. When Mr. Cheese came in, I said I
felt awkward in asking a servant about his calves,--it sounded so
queerly. But I confessed that it was necessary.

“Yes, the path of duty is not always smooth, dear Mrs. Potiphar. It is
often thickly strewn with thorns,” said he, as he sank back in the
_fautteuil_, and put down his _petit verre of Marasquin_.

Just after he had gone the new footman was announced. I assure you,
although it is ridiculous, I felt quite nervous. But when he came in,
I said calmly--

“Well, James, I am glad you have come.”

“Please, ma’am, my name is Henry,” said he.

I was astonished at his taking me up so, and said, decidedly--“James,
the name of my footman is always James. You may call yourself what
you please, I shall always call you James.”

The idea of the man’s undertaking to arrange my servants’ names for
me!

Well, he showed me his references, which were very good, and I was
quite satisfied. But there was the terrible calf business that must be
attended to. I put it off a great while, but I had to begin.

“Well, James!”--and there I stopped.

“Yes, ma’am,” said he.

“I wish--yes--ah!”--and I stopped again.

“Yes, ma’am,” said he.

“James, I wish you had come in knee-breeches.”

“Ma’am?” said he in great surprise.

“In knee-breeches, James,” repeated I. -- “What be they, ma’am? what for, ma’am?” said he, a little frightened,
as I thought.

“Oh! nothing, nothing; but--but--”

“Yes, ma’am,” said James.

“But--but, I want to see--to see--”

“What ma’am?” said James.

“Your legs,” gasped I; and the path _was_ thorny enough, Carrie,
I can tell you. I had a terrible time explaining to him what I meant,
and all about the liveries, etc. Dear me! what a pity these things are
not understood: and then we should never have this trouble about
explanations. However, I couldn’t make him agree to wear the
livery. He said:

“I’ll try to be a good servant, ma’am, but I cannot put on those
things and make a fool of myself. I hope you won’t insist, for I am
very anxious to get a place.”

Think of his dictating to me. I told him that I did not permit my
servants to impose conditions upon me (that’s one of Mrs. Croesus’s
sayings), that I was willing to pay him good wages and treat him well,
but that my James must wear my livery. He looked very sorry, said that
he should like the place very much,--that he was satisfied with the
wages, and was sure that he should please me, but he could not put on
those things. We were both determined, and so parted. I think we were
both sorry; for I should have to go all through the calf-business
again, and he lost a good place.

However, Caroline dear, I have my livery and my footman, and am as
good as anybody. It’s very splendid when I go to Stewart’s to have the
red plush and the purple, and the white calves springing down to open
the door, and to see people look, and say, “I wonder who that is?” And
everybody bows so nicely, and the clerks are so polite, and Mrs. Gnu
is melting with envy on the other side, and Mrs. Croesus goes about
saying, “Dear little woman, that Mrs. Potiphar, but so weak! Pity,
pity!” And Mrs. Settum Downe says, “Is that the Potiphar livery? Ah,
yes, Mr. Potiphar’s grandfather used to shoe my grandfather’s
horses!”--(as if to be useful in the world, were a disgrace,--as
Mr. P. says) and young Downe, and Boosey, and Timon Croesus come up
and stand about so gentlemanly, and say, “Well Mrs. Potiphar, are we
to have no more charming parties this season?”--and Boosey says, in
his droll way, “Let’s keep the ball a-rolling!” That young man is
always ready with a witticism. Then I step out and James throws open
the door, and the young men raise their hats, and the new crowd says,
“I wonder who that is!” and the plush and purple, and calves spring up
behind, and I drive home to dinner.

Now, Carrie, dear, isn’t that nice?

Well, I don’t know how it is--but things are so queer. Sometimes when
I wake up in the morning, in my room, which I have had tapestried with
fluted rose silk, and lie thinking, under the lace curtains; although
I may have been at one of Mrs. Gnu’s splendid parties the night
before, and am going to Mrs. Silke’s to dinner, and to the opera and
Mrs. Settum Downe’s in the evening, and have nothing to do all the
day but go to Stewart’s, or Martelle’s or Lefevre’s, and shop, and pay
morning calls;--do you know, as I say, that sometimes I hear an old
familiar tune played upon a hand-organ far away in some street, and it
seems to me in that half-drowsy state under the laces, that I hear the
girls and boys singing it in the fields where we used to play. It is a
kind of dream, I suppose, but often, as I listen, I am sure that I
hear Henry’s voice again that used to ring so gayly among the old
trees, and I walk with him in the sunlight to the bank by the river,
and he throws in the flower--as he really did--and says, with a laugh,
“If it goes this side of the stump I am saved; if the other, I am
lost;” and then he looks at me as if I had anything to do with it, and
the flower drifts slowly off and off, and goes the other side of the
old stump, and we walk homeward silently, until Henry laughs out, and
says, “Thank heaven, my fate is not a flower;” and I swear to love him
for ever and ever, and marry him, and live in a dingy little old room
in some of the dark and dirty streets in the city.

Then I doze again: but presently the music steals into my sleep, and I
see him as I saw him last standing in his pulpit, so calm and noble,
and drawing the strong men as well as the weak women by his earnest
persuasion; and after service he smiles upon me kindly, and says,
“This is my wife, and the wife, who looks like the Madonna in that
picture of Andrea Del Sarto’s, which you liked so at the gallery,
leads us to a little house buried in roses, looking upon a broad and
lovely landscape,” and Henry whispers to me as a beautiful boy bounds
into the room, “Mrs. Potiphar, I am very happy.”

I doze again until Adele comes in and opens the shutters. I do not
hear the music any more; but those days I do somehow seem to hear it
all the time. Of course, Mr. P. is gone long before I wake, so he
knows nothing about all this. I generally come in at night after he is
asleep, and he is up and has his breakfast, and goes down town before
I wake in the morning. He comes home to dinner, but he is apt to be
silent; and after dinner he takes his nap in the parlor over his
newspaper, while I go up and let Adele dress my hair for the
evening. Sometimes Mr. P. groans into a clean shirt and goes with me
to the ball; but not often. When I come home, as I said, he is asleep,
so I don’t see a great deal of him, except in the summer, when I am at
Saratoga or Newport; and then, not so much, after all, for he usually
only passes Sunday, and I must be a good Christian, you know, and go
to church. On the whole, we have not a very intimate acquaintance; but
I have a great respect for him. He told me the other day that he
should make at least thirty thousand dollars this year.

My darling Carrie--I am very sorry I can’t write you a longer
letter. I want to consult you about wearing gold powder like the new
Empress. It would kill Mrs. Croesus if you and I should be the first
to come out in it; and don’t you think the effect would be fine, when
we were dancing, to shower the gold mist around us! How it would
sparkle upon the gentlemen’s black coats! (“Yes,” says Mr. P., “and
how finely Gauche Boosey, and Timon Croesus, and young Downe will look
in silk tights and small clothes!”) They say it’s genuine gold ground
up. I have already sent for a white velvet and lace--the Empress’s
bridal dress, you know. That foolish old P. asked me if I had sent for
the Emperor and the Bank of France too.

“Men ask such absurd questions,” said I. -- “Mrs. Potiphar, I never asked but one utterly absurd question in my
life,” said he, and marched out of the house.

_Au revoir, chère Caroline_. I have a thousand things to say, but
I know you must be tired to death.

Fondly yours,

POLLY POTIPHAR.

P. S.--Our little Fred. is quite down with the scarlet fever. Potiphar
says I mustn’t expose myself, so I don’t go into the room; but
Mrs. Jollup, the nurse, tells me through the keyhole how he is.
Mr. P. sleeps in the room next the nursery, so as not to carry the
infection to me. He looks very solemn as he walks down town. I hope it
won’t spoil Fred’s complexion. I should be so sorry to have him a
little fright! Poor little thing!

P. S. 2d.--Isn’t it funny about the music?




III. -- A MEDITATION BY PAUL POTIPHAR, ESQ.


Well, my new house is finished--and so am I. I hope Mrs. Potiphar is
satisfied. Everybody agrees that it is “palatial.” The daily papers
have had columns of description, and I am, evidently, according to
their authority, “munificent,” “tasteful,” “enterprising,” and
“patriotic.”

Amen! but what business have I with palatial residences? What more can
I possibly want, than a spacious, comfortable house? Do _I_ want
buhl _escritoires_? Do I want or _molu_ things? Do I know
anything about pictures and statues? In the name of heaven do I want
rose-pink bed-curtains to give my grizzly old phiz a delicate “uroral
hue,” as Cream Cheese says of Mrs. P.’s complexion? Because I have made
fifty thousand this last year in Timbuctoo bonds, must I convert it
all into a house, so large that it will not hold me comfortably,--so
splendid that I might as well live in a porcelain vase, for the
trouble of taking care of it,--so prodigiously “palatial” that I have
to skulk into my private room, put on my slippers, close the door,
shut myself up with myself, and wonder why I married Mrs. Potiphar?

This house is her doing. Before I married her, I would have worn
yellow silk breeches on ‘Change if she had commanded me--for love. Now
I would build her two houses twice as large as this, if she required
it--for peace. It’s all over. When I came home from China I was the
desirable Mr. Potiphar, and every evening was a field-day for me, in
which I reviewed all the matrimonial forces. It is astonishing, now I
come to think of it, how skilfully Brigadier-General Mrs. Pettitoes
deployed those daughters of hers; how vigorously Mrs. Tabby led on her
forlorn hope; and how unweariedly, Murat-like, Mrs. De Famille charged
at the head of her cavalry. They deserve to be made Marshals of
France, all of them. And I am sure, that if women ought ever to
receive honorary testimonials, it is for having “married a daughter
well.”

That’s a pretty phrase! The mammas marry, the misses are married.

And yet, I don’t see why I say so. I fear I am getting sour. For
certainly, Polly’s mother didn’t marry Polly to me. I fell in love
with her, the rest followed. Old Gnu says that it’s true Polly’s
mother didn’t marry her, but she did marry herself, to me.

{Illustration}

“Do you really think, Paul Potiphar,” said he, a few months ago, when
I was troubled about Polly’s getting a livery, “that your wife was in
love with you, a dry old chip from China? Don’t you hear her say
whenever any of her friends are engaged, that they ‘have done very
well!’ and made a ‘capital match!’ and have you any doubt of her
meaning? Don’t you know that this is the only country in which the
word ‘money’ must never be named in the young female ear; and in whose
best society--not universally nor without exception, of course not;
Paul, don’t be a fool--money makes marriages? When you were engaged,
‘the world’ said that it was a ‘capital thing’ for Polly. Did that
mean that you were a good, generous, intelligent, friendly, and
patient man, who would be the companion for life she ought to have?
You know, as well as I do, and as all the people who said it know,
that it meant you were worth a few hundred thousands, that you could
build a splendid house, keep horses and chariots, and live in
style. You and I are sensible men, Paul, and we take the world as we
find it; and know that if a man wants a good dinner he must pay for
it. We don’t quarrel with this state of things. How can it be helped?
But we need not virtuously pretend it’s something else. When my wife,
being then a gay girl, first smiled at me, and looked at me, and smelt
at the flowers I sent her in an unutterable manner, and proved to me
that she didn’t love me by the efforts she made to show that she did,
why, I was foolishly smitten with her, and married her. I knew that
she did not marry me, but sundry shares in the Patagonia and Nova
Zembla Consolidation, and a few hundred house lots upon the
island. What then? I wanted her, she was willing to take me,--being
sensible enough to know that the stock and the lots had an
incumbrance. _Voila tout,_ as young Boosey says. Your wife wants
you to build a house. You’d better build it. It’s the easiest
way. Make up your mind to Mrs. Potiphar, my dear Paul, and thank
heaven you’ve no daughters to be married off by that estimable woman.”

Why does a man build a house? To live in, I suppose--to have a
home. But is a fine house a home? I mean, is a “palatial residence,”
 with Mrs. Potiphar at the head of it, the “home” of which we all dream
more or less, and for which we ardently long as we grow older? A
house, I take it, is a retreat to which a man hurries from business,
and in which he is compensated by the tenderness and thoughtful regard
of a woman, and the play of his children, for the rough rubs with
men. I know it is a silly view of the case, but I’m getting old and
can’t help it. Mrs. Potiphar is perfectly right when she says:

“You men are intolerable. After attending to your own affairs all day,
and being free from the fuss of housekeeping, you expect to come home
and shuffle into your slippers, and snooze over the evening paper--if
it were possible to snooze over the exciting and respectable evening
journal you take--while we are to sew, and talk with you if you are
talkative, and darn the stockings, and make tea. You come home tired,
and likely enough, surly, and gloom about like a thundercloud if
dinner isn’t ready for you the instant you are ready for it, and then
sit mum and eat it; and snap at the children, and show yourselves the
selfish, ugly things you are. Am _I_ to have no fun, never go to
the opera, never go to a ball, never have a party at home? Men are
tyrants, Mr. Potiphar. They are ogres who entice us poor girls into
their castles, and then eat up our happiness and scold us while they
eat.”

Well, I suppose it is so. I suppose I am an ogre and enticed Polly
into my castle. But she didn’t find it large enough, and teased me to
build another. I suppose she does sit with me in the evening, and
sew, and make tea, and wait upon me. I suppose she does, but I’ve not
a clear idea of it. I know it’s unkind of me, when I have been hard
at work all day, trying to make and secure the money that gives her
and her family everything they want, and which wearies me body and
soul, to expect her to let me stay at home, and be quiet. I know I
ought to dress and go into Gnu’s house, and smirk at his wife, and
stand up in a black suit before him attired in the same way, and talk
about the same stocks that we discussed down town in the morning in
colored trowsers. That’s a social duty, I suppose. And I ought to see
various slight young gentlemen whirl my wife around the room, and hear
them tell her when they stop, that it’s very warm. That’s another
social duty, I suppose. And I must smile when the same young gentlemen
put their elbows into my stomach, and hop on my feet in order to
extend the circle of the dance. I’m sure Mrs. P. is right. She does
very right to ask, “Have we no social duties, I should like to know?”

And when we have performed these social duties in Gnu’s house, how
mean it is, how “it looks,” not to build a larger house for him and
Mrs. Gnu to come and perform their social duties in. I give it up.
There’s no doubt of it.

One day Polly said to me:

“Mr. Potiphar, we’re getting down town.”

“What do you mean, my dear?”

“Why, everybody is building above us, and there are actually shops in
the next street. Singe, the pastry-cook, has hired Mrs. Croesus’s old
house.”

“I know it. Old Croesus told me so some time ago; and he said how
sorry he was to go. ‘Why, Potiphar,’ said he, ‘I really hoped when I
built there, that I should stay, and not go out of the house, finally,
until I went into no other. I have lived there long enough to love the
place, and have some associations with it; and my family have grown up
in it, and love the old house too. It was our _home_. When any of
us said ‘home’ we meant not the family only, but the house in which
the family lived, where the children were all born, and where two have
died, and my old mother, too. I’m in a new house now, and have lost my
reckoning entirely. I don’t know the house; I’ve no associations with
it. The house is new, the furniture is new, and my feelings are
new. It’s a farce for me to begin again, in this way. But my wife
says it’s all right, that everybody does it, and wants to know how it
can be helped; and, as I don’t want to argue the matter, I look amen.’
That’s the way Mr. Croesus submits to his new house, Mrs. Potiphar.”

She doesn’t understand it. Poor child! how should she? She, and
Mrs. Croesus, and Mrs. Gnu, and even Mrs. Settum Downe, are all as
nomadic as Bedouin Arabs. The Rev. Cream Cheese says, that he sees in
this constant migration from one house to another, a striking
resemblance to the “tents of a night,” spoken of in Scripture. He
imparts this religious consolation to me when I grumble. He says, that
it prevents a too-closely clinging affection to temporary abodes. One
day, at dinner, that audacious wag, Boosey, asked him if the “many
manthuns” mentioned in the Bible, were not as true of mortal as of
immortal life. Mrs. Potiphar grew purple, and Mr. Cheese looked at
Boosey in the most serious manner over the top of his champagne-glass.
I am glad to say that Polly has properly rebuked Gauche Boosey for his
irreligion, by not asking him to her Saturday evening _matinees
dansantes_.

There was no escape from the house, however. It must be built. It was
not only Mrs. Potiphar that persisted, but the spirit of the age and
of the country. One can’t live among shops. When Pearl street comes to
Park Place, Park Place must run for its life up to Thirtieth street. I
know it can’t be helped, but I protested, and I will protest. If I’ve
got to go, I’ll have my grumble. My wife says:

“I’m ashamed of you, Potiphar. Do you pretend to be an American, and
not give way willingly to the march of improvement? You had better
talk with Mr. Cream Cheese upon the ‘genius of the country.’ You are
really unpatriotic, you show nothing of the enterprising spirit of
your time.” “Yes,” I answer. “That’s pretty from you; you are
patriotic aren’t you, with your liveries and illimitable expenses, and
your low bows to money, and your immense intimacy with all lords and
ladies that honor the city by visiting it. You are prodigiously
patriotic with your inane imitations of a splendor impossible to you
in the nature of things. You are the ideal American woman, aren’t you,
Mrs. Potiphar?”

Then I run, for I’m afraid of myself, as much as of her. I am sick of
this universal plea of patriotism. It is used to excuse all the
follies that outrage it. I am not patriotic if I do not do this and
that, which, if done, is a ludicrous caricature of something
foreign. I am not up to the time if I persist in having my own comfort
in my own way. I try to resist the irresistible march of improvement,
if I decline to build a great house, which, when it is built, is a
puny copy of a bad model. I am very unpatriotic if I am not trying to
outspend foreign noblemen, and if I don’t affect, without education,
or taste, or habit, what is only beautiful, when it is the result of
the three.

However, this is merely my grumble. I knew, the first morning
Mrs. Potiphar spoke of a new house, that I must build it. What she
said was perfectly true; we were getting down town, there was no doubt
of the growing inconvenience of our situation. It was becoming a
dusty noisy region. The congregation of the Rev. Far Niente had sold
their church and moved up town. Now doesn’t it really seem as if we
were a cross between the Arabs who dwell in tents and those who live
in cities, for we are migratory in the city? A directory is a more
imperative annual necessity here than in any other civilized
region. My wife says it is a constant pleasure to her to go round and
see the new houses and the new furniture of her new friends, every
year. I saw that I must submit. But I determined to make little
occasional stands against it. So one day I said:

“Polly, do you know that the wives of all the noblemen who will be
your very dear and intimate friends and models when you go abroad,
always live in the same houses in London, and Paris, and Rome, and
Vienna? Do you know that Northumberland House is so called because it
is the hereditary town mansion of the Duke, and that the son and
daughter-in-law of Lord Londonderry will live after him in the house
where his father and mother lived before him? Did that ever occur to
you, my dear?”

“Mr. Potiphar,” she replied, “do you mean to go by the example of
foreign noblemen? I thought you always laughed at me for what you call
‘aping.’”

“So I do, and so I will continue to do, Mrs. Potiphar; only I thought
that, perhaps, you would like to know the fact, because it might make
you more lenient to me when I regretted leaving our old house here. It
has an aristocratic precedent.”

Poor, dear little Mrs. P.! It didn’t take as I meant it should, and I
said no more. Yet it does seem to me a pity that we lose all the
interest and advantage of a homestead. The house and its furniture
become endeared by long residence, and by their mute share in all the
chances of our life. The chair in which some dear old friend so often
sat--father and mother, perhaps--and in which they shall sit no more;
the old-fashioned table with the cuts and scratches that generations
of children have made upon it; the old book-cases; the heavy
side-board; the glass, from which such bumpers sparkled for those who
are hopelessly scattered now, or for ever gone; the doors they opened;
the walls that echoed their long-hushed laughter,--are we wise when we
part with them all, or, when compelled to do so, to leave them
eagerly?

I remember my brother James used to say: “What is our envy for our
country friends, but that their homes are permanent and
characteristic? Their children’s children may play in the same
garden. Each annual festival may summon them to the old hearth. In
the meeting-house they sit in the wooden pews where long ago they sat
and dreamed of Jerusalem, and now as they sit there, that long ago is
fairer than the holy city. Through the open window they see the grass
waving softly in the summer air, over old graves dearer to them than
many new houses. By a thousand tangible and visible associations they
are still, with a peculiar sense of actuality, near to all they love.”

Polly would call it a sentimental whim--if she could take
Mrs. Croesus’s advice before she spoke of it--but what then? When I
was fifteen, I fell desperately in love with Lucy Lamb. “Pooh, pooh,”
 said my father, “you are romantic, it’s til a whim of yours.”

And he succeeded in breaking it up. I went to China, and Lucy married
old Firkin, and lived in a splendid house, and now lies in a splendid
tomb of Carrara marble, exquisitely sculptured.

When I was forty, I came home from China, and the old gentleman said,
“I want you to marry Arabella Bobbs, the heiress. It will be a good
match.”

I said to him,

“Pooh, pooh, my dear father, you are mercenary; it’s all a whim of
yours.”

“My dear son, I know it,” said he, “the whole thing a whim. You can
live on a hundred dollars a year, if you choose. But you have the whim
of a good dinner, of a statue, of a book. Why not? Only be careful in
following your whims, that they really come to something. Have as many
whims as you please, but don’t follow them all.”

“Certainly not,” said I; and fell in love with the present
Mrs. Potiphar, and married her off-hand. So, if she calls this
genuine influence of association a mere whim--let it go at that. She
is a whim, too. My mistake simply was in not following out the
romantic whim, and marrying Lucy Lamb. At least it seems to me so,
this morning. In fact sitting in my very new “palatial residence,” the
whole business of life seems to me rather whimsical.

For here I am, come into port at last. No longer young,--but worth a
good fortune,--master of a great house,--respected down town,--husband
of Mrs. Potiphar,--and father of Master Frederic ditto. Per contra; I
shall never be in love again,--in getting my fortune I have lost my
real life,--my house is dreary,--Mrs. Potiphar is not Lucy Lamb,--and
Master Frederic--is a good boy.

The game is all up for me, and yet I trust I have good feeling enough
left to sympathize with those who are still playing. I see girls as
lovely and dear as any of which poets have sung--as fresh as
dew-drops, and beautiful as morning. I watch their glances, and
understand them better than they know.--for they do not dream that
“old Potiphar” does any thing more than pay Mrs. P.’s bills. I see the
youths nervous about neckcloths, and anxious that their hair shall be
parted straight behind. I see them all wear the same tie, the same
trowsers, the same boots. I hear them all say the same thing, and
dance with the same partners in the same way. I see them go to Europe
and return--I hear them talk slang to show that they have exhausted
human life in foreign parts and observe them demean themselves
according to their idea of the English nobleman. I watch them go in
strongly for being “manly,” and “smashing the spoonies”--asserting
intimacies with certain uncertain women in Paris, and proving it by
their treatment of ladies at home. I see them fuddle themselves on
fine wines and talk like cooks, play heavily and lose, and win, and
pay, and drink, and maintain a conservative position in politics,
denouncing “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” as a false and fanatical tract; and
declaring that our peculiar institutions are our own affair, and that
John Bull had better keep his eyes at home to look into his coal
mines. I see this vigorous fermentation subside, and much clear
character deposited--and, also, much life and talent muddled forever.

It is whimsical, because this absurd spectacle is presented by
manikins who are made of the same clay as Plutarch’s heroes-because,
deliberately, they prefer cabbages to roses. I am not at all angry
with them. On the contrary, when they dance well I look on with
pleasure. Man ought to dance, but he ought to do something else,
too. All genial gentlemen in all ages have danced. Who quarrels with
dancing? Ask Mrs. Potiphar if I ever objected to it. But then, people
must dance at their own risk. If Lucy Lamb, by dancing with young
Boosey when he is tipsy, shows that she has no self-respect, how can
I, coolly talking with Mrs. Lamb in the corner, and gravely looking
on, respect the young lady? Lucy tells me that if she dances with
James she must with John. I cannot deny it, for I am not sufficiently
familiar with the regulations of the mystery. Only this; if dancing
with sober James makes it necessary to dance with tipsy John--it seems
to me, upon a hasty glance at the subject, that a self-respecting Lucy
would refrain from the dance with James. Why it should be so, I
cannot understand. Why Lucy must dance with every man who asks her,
whether he is in his senses, or knows how to dance, or is agreeable to
her or not, is a profound mystery to Paul Potiphar. Here is a case of
woman’s wrongs, decidedly. We men cull the choicest partners, make the
severest selections, and the innocent Lucys gracefully submit. Lucy
loves James, and a waltz with him (as P. P. knows very well from
experience) is “a little heaven below” to both. Now, dearest Lucy, why
must you pay the awful penance of immediately waltzing with John,
against whom your womanly instinct rebels? And yet the laws of social
life are so stern, that Lucy must make the terrible decision, whether
it is better to waltz with James or worse to waltz with John!
“Whether,” to put it strongly with Father Jerome, “heaven is
pleasanter than hell is painful.”

I say that I watch these graceful gamesters, without bitter
feeling. Sometimes it is sad to see James woo Lucy, win her, marry
her, and then both discover that they have made a mistake. I don’t see
how they could have helped it; and when the world, that loves them
both so tenderly, holds up its pure hands of horror, why, Paul
Potiphar, goes quietly home to Mrs. P., who is dressing for Lucy’s
ball, and says nothing. He prefers to retire into his private room,
and his slippers, and read the last number of _Bleak House_, or a
chapter in _Vanity Fair_. If Mrs. Potiphar catches him at the
latter, she is sure to say:

“There it is again; always reading those exaggerated sketches of
society. Odious man that he is. I am sure he never knew a truly
womanly woman.”

“Polly, when he comes back in September I’ll introduce him to you,” is
the only answer I have time to make, for it is already half past ten,
and Mrs. P. must be off to the ball.

I know that our set is not the world, nor the country, nor the city. I
know that the amiable youths who are in league to crush spooneyism are
not many, and well I know, that in our set (I mean Mrs. P.’s) there
are hearts as noble and characters as lofty as in any time and in any
land. And yet, as the father of a family (viz. Frederic, our son), I
am constrained to believe that our social tendency is to the wildest
extravagance. Here, for instance, is my house. It cost me eighty-five
thousand dollars. It is superbly furnished. Mrs. P. and I don’t know
much about such things. She was only stringent for buhl, and the last
Parisian models, so we delivered our house into the hands of certain
eminent upholsterers to be furnished, as we send Frederic to the
tailor’s to be clothed. To be sure, I asked what proof we had that the
upholsterer was possessed of taste. But Mrs. P. silenced me, by saying
that it was his business to have taste, and that a man who sold
furniture, naturally knew what was handsome and proper for my house.

The furnishing was certainly performed with great splendor and
expense. My drawing-rooms strongly resemble the warehouse of an ideal
cabinetmaker. Every whim of table--every caprice of chair and sofa,
is satisfied in those rooms. There are curtains like rainbows, and
carpets, as if the curtains had dripped all over the floor. There are
heavy cabinets of carved walnut, such as belong in the heavy
wainscotted rooms of old palaces, set against my last French pattern
of wall paper. There are lofty chairs like the thrones of archbishops
in Gothic cathedrals, standing by the side of the elaborately gilded
frames of mirrors. Marble statues of Venus and the Apollo support my
mantels, upon which _or molu_ Louis Quatorze clocks ring the
hours. In all possible places there are statues, statuettes, vases,
plates, teacups, and liquor-cases. The woodwork, when white, is
elaborated in Moresco carving--when oak and walnut, it is heavily
moulded. The contrasts are pretty, but rather sudden. In truth, my
house is a huge curiosity shop of valuable articles,--clustered
without taste, or feeling, or reason. They are there, because my
house was large and I was able to buy them; and because, as
Mrs. P. says, one must have buhl and _or molu_, and new forms of
furniture, and do as well as one’s neighbors, and show that one is
rich, if he is so. They are there, in fact, because I couldn’t help
it. I didn’t want them, but then I don’t know what I did want. Somehow
I don’t feel as if I had a home, merely because orders were given to
the best upholsterers and fancy-men in town to send a sample of all
their wares to my house. To pay a morning call at Mrs. Potiphar’s is,
in some ways, better than going shopping. You see more new and costly
things in a shorter time. People say, “What a love of a chair!” “What
a darling table!” “What a heavenly sofa!” and they all go and tease
their husbands to get things precisely like them. When Kurz Pacha the
Sennaar Minister, came to a dinner at my house, he said:

“Bless my soul! Mr. Potiphar, your house is just like your
neighbor’s.”

I know it. I am perfectly aware that there is no more difference
between my house and Croesus’s, than there is in two ten dollar bills
of the same bank. He might live in my house and I in his, without any
confusion. He has the same curtains, carpets, chairs, tables, Venuses,
Apollos, busts, vases, etc. And he goes into his room, and thinks
it’s all a devilish bore, just as I do. We have each got to refurnish
every few years, and therefore have no possible opportunity for
attaching ourselves to the objects about us. Unfortunately Kurz Pacha
particularly detested precisely what Mrs. P. most liked, because it is
the fashion to like them. I mean the Louis Quatorze and the Louis
Quinze things.

“Taste, dear Mrs. Potiphar,” said the Pacha, “was a thing not known in
the days of those kings. Grace was entirely supplanted by
grotesqueness, and now, instead of pure and beautiful Greek forms, we
must collect these hideous things. If you are going backward to find
models, why not go as far as the good ones? My dear madame, an _or
molu_ Louis Quatorze clock would have given Pericles a fit. Your
drawing-rooms would have thrown Aspasia into hysterics. Things are
not beautiful because they cost money; nor is any grouping handsome
without harmony. Your house is like a woman dressed in Ninon de
l’Enclos’s bodice, with Queen Anne’s hooped skirt, who limps in
Chinese shoes, and wears an Elizabethan ruff round her neck, and a
Druse’s horn on her head. My dear madam, this is the kind of thing we
go to see in museums. It is the old stock joke of the world.”

By Jove! how mad Mrs. Potiphar was! She rose from table, to the great
dismay of Kurz Pacha, and I could only restrain her by reminding her
that the Sennaar Minister had but an imperfect idea of our language,
and that in Sennaar people probably said what they thought when they
conversed.

“You’d better go to Sennaar, then, yourself, Mr. Potiphar,” said my
wife, as she smoothed her rumpled feathers.

“‘Pon my word, madam, it’s my own opinion,” replied I. -- Kurz Pacha, who is a philosopher (of the Sennaar school), asks me if
people have no ideas of their own in building houses. I answer, none,
that I know of, except that of getting the house built. The fact is,
it is as much as Paul Potiphar can do, to make the money to erect his
palatial residence, and then to keep it going. There are a great many
fine statues in my house, but I know nothing about them: I don’t see
why we should have such heathen images in reputable houses. But
Mrs. P. says:

“Pooh! have you no love for the fine arts?”

There it is. It doesn’t do not to love the fine arts; so Polly is
continually cluttering up the halls and staircases with marble, and
sending me heavy bills for the same.

When the house was ready, and my wife had purchased the furniture, she
came and said to me:

“Now, my dear P., there is one thing we haven’t thought of.”

“What’s that?”

“Pictures, you know, dear.”

“What do you want pictures for?” growled I, rather surlily, I am
afraid.

“Why, to furnish the walls; what do you suppose we want pictures for?”

“I tell you, Polly,” said I, “that pictures are the most extravagant
kind of furniture. Pshaw! a man rubs and dabbles a little upon a
canvas two feet square, and then coolly asks three hundred dollars for
it.”

“Dear me, Pot,” she answered, “I don’t want home-made pictures. What
an idea! Do you think I’d have pictures on my walls that were painted
in this country?--No, my dear husband, let us have some choice
specimens of the old masters. A landscape by Rayfel, for instance; or
one of Angel’s fruit pieces, or a cattle scene by Verynees, or a
Madonna of Giddo’s, or a boar hunt of Hannibal Crackkey’s.”

What was the use of fighting against this sort of thing? I told her to
have it her own way. Mrs. P. consulted Singe the pastry cook, who
told her his cousin had just come out from Italy with a lot of the
very finest pictures in the world, which he had bribed one of the
Pope’s guard to steal from the Vatican, and which he would sell at a
bargain.

They hang on my walls now. They represent nothing in particular; but
in certain lights, if you look very closely, you can easily recognize
something in them that looks like a lump of something brown. There is
one very ugly woman with a convulsive child in her arms, to which
Mrs. P. directly takes all her visitors, and asks them to admire the
beautiful Shay douver of Giddo’s. When I go out to dinner with people
that talk pictures and books, and that kind of thing, I don’t like to
seem behind, so I say, in a critical way, that Giddo was a good
painter. None of them contradict me, and one day when somebody asked,
“Which of his pictures do you prefer?” I answered straight, “His Shay
douver,” and no more questions were asked.

They hang all about the house now. The Giddo is in the dining room. I
asked the Sennaar Minister if it wasn’t odd to have a religious
picture in the dining-room. He smiled, and said that it was perfectly
proper if I liked it, and if the picture of such an ugly woman didn’t
take away my appetite.

“What difference does it make,” said he, in the Sennaar manner, “it
would be equally out of keeping with every other room in your
house. My dear Potiphar, it is a perfectly unprincipled house, this of
yours. If your mind were in the condition of your house, so
ill-assorted, so confused, so overloaded with things that don’t belong
together, you would never make another cent. You have order,
propriety, harmony, in your dealings with the Symmes’s Hole Bore Co.,
and they are the secrets of your success. Why not have the same
elements in your house? Why pitch every century, country, and fashion,
higgledy-piggledly into your parlors and dining-room? Have everything
you can get, in heaven’s name, but have everything in its place. If
you are a plodding tradesman, knowing and caring nothing about
pictures, or books, or statuary, or _objets de vertu_; don’t have
them. Suppose your neighbor chooses to put them in his house. If he
has them merely because he had the money to pay for them, he is the
butt of every picture and book he owns.”

When I meet Mr. Croesus in Wall street, I respect him as I do a king
in his palace, or a scholar in his study. He is master of the
occasion. He commands like Nelson at the Nile. I, who am merely a
diplomatist, skulk and hurry along, and if Mr. Croesus smiles, I
inwardly thank him for his charity. Wall street is Croesus’s sphere,
and all his powers play there perfectly. But when I meet him in his
house, surrounded by objects of art, by the triumphs of a skill which
he does not understand, and for which he cares nothing,--of which, in
fact, he seems afraid, because he knows any chance question about them
would trip him up,--my feeling is very much changed. If I should ask
him what _or molu_ is, I don’t believe he could answer, though
his splendid _or molu_ clock rang, indignant, from the mantel.
But if I should say, ‘Invest me this thousand dollars,’ he would
secure me eight per cent. It certainly isn’t necessary to know what
_or molu_ is, nor to have any other _objet de vertu_ but
your wife. Then why should you barricade yourself behind all these
things that you really cannot enjoy, because you don’t understand? If
you could not read Italian, you would be a fool to buy Dante, merely
because you knew he was a great poet. And, in the same way, if you
know nothing about matters of art, it is equally foolish for you to
buy statues and pictures, although you hear on all sides that, as
Mrs. P. says, one must love art.

“As for learning from your own pictures, you know perfectly well, that
until you have some taste in the matter, you will be paying money for
your pictures blindly, so that the only persons upon whom your display
of art would make any impression, will be the very ones to see that
you know nothing about it.

“In Sennaar, a man is literally ‘the master of the house.’ He isn’t
surrounded by what he does not understand; he is not obliged to talk
book, and picture, when he knows nothing about these matters. He is
not afraid of his parlor, and you feel instantly upon entering the
house, the character of the master. Please, my dear Mr. Potiphar,
survey your mansion, and tell me what kind of a man it indicates. If
it does not proclaim (in your case) the President of the Patagonia
Junction, a man shrewd, and hard, and solid, without taste or liberal
cultivation, it is a painted deceiver. If it tries to insinuate by
this chaotic profusion of rich and rare objects, that you are a
cultivated, accomplished, tasteful, and generous man, it is a bad lie,
because a transparent one. Why, my dear old Pot., the moment your
servant opens the front door, a man of sense perceives the whole
thing. You and Mrs. Potiphar are bullied by all the brilliancy you
have conjured up. It is the old story of the fisherman and the
genii. And your guests all see it. They are too well-bred to speak of
it; but I come from Sennaar, where we do not lay so much stress upon
that kind of good-breeding.

“Mr. Paul Potiphar, it is one thing to have plenty of money, and quite
another to know how to spend it.”

{Illustration}

Now, as I told him, this kind of talk may do very well in Sennaar, but
it is absurd in a country like ours. How are people to know that I’m
rich, unless I show it? I’m sorry for it, but how shall I help it,
having Mrs. P. at hand?

“How about the library?” said she one day.

“What library?” inquired I. -- “Why, our library, of course.”

“I haven’t any.”

“Do you mean to have such a house as this without a library?”

“Why,” said I plaintively, “I don’t read books--I never did, and I
never shall; and I don’t care anything about them. Why should I have a
library?”

“Why, because it’s part of a house like this.”

“Mrs. P., are you fond of books?”

“No, not particularly. But one must have some regard to
appearances. Suppose we are Hottentots, you don’t want us to look so,
do you?”

I thought that it was quite as barbarous to imprison a lot of books
that we should never open, and that would stand in gilt upon the
shelves, silently laughing us to scorn, as not to have them if we
didn’t want them. I proposed a compromise.

“Is it the looks of the thing, Mrs. P.?” said I. -- “That’s all,” she answered.

“Oh! well, I’ll arrange it.”

So I had my shelves built, and my old friends Matthews and Rider
furnished me with complete sets of handsome gilt covers to all the
books that no gentleman’s library should be without, which I arranged
carefully, upon the shelves, and had the best looking library in
town. I locked ‘em in, and the key is always lost when anybody wants
to take down a book. However, it was a good investment in leather, for
it brings me in the reputation of a reading man and a patron of
literature.

Mrs. P. is a religious woman--the Rev. Cream Cheese takes care of
that--but only yesterday she proposed something to me that smells very
strongly of candlesticks.

“Pot., I want a _prie-dieu_.”

“Pray-do what?” answered I. -- “Stop, you wicked man. I say I want a kneeling-chair.”

“A kneeling-chair?” I gasped, utterly confused.

“A _prie-dieu_--a _prie-dieu_--to pray in, you
know.”

My Sennaar friend, who was at table, choked. When he recovered, and
we were sipping the “Blue seal,” he told me that he thought
Mrs. Potiphar in a _prie-dieu_ was rather a more amusing idea
than Giddo’s Madonna in the dining-room.

“She will insist upon its being carved handsomely in walnut. She will
not pray upon pine. It is a romantic, not a religious, whim. She’ll
want a missal next; vellum or no prayers. This is piety of the ‘Lady
Alice’ school. It belongs to a fine lady aid a fine house precisely as
your library does, and it will be precisely as genuine. Mrs. Potiphar
in a _prie-dieu_ is like that blue morocco Comus in your
library. It is charming to look at, but there’s nothing in it. Let her
have the _prie-dieu_ by all means, and then begin to build a
chapel. No gentleman’s house should be without a chapel. You’ll have
to come to it, Potiphar. You’ll have to hear Cream Cheese read morning
prayers in a purple chasuble,--_que sais-je_? You’ll see
religion made a part of the newest fashion in houses, as you already
see literature and art, and with just as much reality and reason.”

Privately, I am glad the Sennaar minister has gone out of town. It’s
bad enough to be uncomfortable in your own house without knowing why;
but to have a philosopher of the Sennaar school show you why you are
so, is cutting it rather too fat. I am gradually getting resigned to
my house. I’ve got one more struggle to go through next week in Mrs.
Potiphar’s musical party. The morning soirees are over for the season,
and Mrs. P. begins to talk of the watering places. I am getting
gradually resigned; but only gradually.

“Oh! dear me, I wonder if this is the “home, sweet home” business the
girls used to sing about! Music does certainly alter cases. I can’t
quite get used to it. Last week I was one morning in the basement
breakfast-room, and I heard an extra cried. I ran out of the area
door--dear me!--before I thought what I was bout, I emerged bareheaded
from under the steps, and ran a little way after the boy. I know it
wasn’t proper. I am sorry, very sorry. I am afraid Mrs. Croesus saw
me; I know Mrs. Gnu told it all about that morning: and Mrs. Settum
Downe called directly upon Mrs. Potiphar, to know if it were really
true that I had lost my wits, as everybody was saying. I don’t know
what Mrs. P. answered. I am sorry to have compromised her so. I went
immediately and ordered a pray-do of the blackest walnut. My
resignation is very gradual. Kurz Pacha says they put on gravestones
in Sennaar three Latin words--do you know Latin? if you don’t come and
borrow some of my books. The words are: _ora pro me!_”




IV. -- FROM THE SUMMER DIARY OF MINERVA
TATTLE.


NEWPORT, _August_.

It certainly is not papa’s fault that he doesn’t understand French;
but he ought not to pretend to. It does put one in such uncomfortable
situations occasionally. In fact, I think it would be quite as well if
we could sometimes “sink the paternal,” as Timon Croesus says. I
suppose everybody has heard of the awful speech pa made in the parlor
at Saratoga. My dearest friend, Tabby Dormouse, told me she had heard
of it everywhere, and that it was ten times as absurd each time it was
repeated. By the by, Tabby is a dear creature, isn’t she? It’s so
nice to have a spy in the enemy’s camp, as it were, and to hear
everything that everybody says about you. She is not handsome,--poor,
dear Tabby! There’s no denying it but she can’t help it. I was
obliged to tell young Downe so, quite decidedly, for I really think he
had an idea she was good-looking. The idea of Tabby Dormouse being
handsome! But she is a useful little thing in her way; one of my
intimates.

The true story is this.

Ma and I had persuaded pa to take us to Saratoga, for we heard the
English party were to be there, and we were anxious they should see
_some_ good society at least. It seems such a pity they shouldn’t
know what handsome dresses we really do have in this country! And I
mentioned to some of the most English of our young men, that there
might be something to be done at Saratoga. But they shrugged their
shoulders, especially Timon Croesus and Gauche Boosey, and said--

“Well, really, the fact is, Miss Tattle, all the Englishmen I have
ever met are--in fact--a little snobbish. However.”

That was about what they said. But I thought, considering their
fondness of the English model in dress and manner, that they might
have been more willing to meet some genuine aristocracy. Yet, perhaps,
that handsome Col. Abattew is right in saying with his grand military
air,--

“The British aristocracy, madam,--the British aristocracy is vulgar.”

Well, we all went up to Saratoga. But the distinguished strangers did
not come. I held back that last muslin of mine, the yellow one,
embroidered with the Alps, and a distant view of the isles of Greece
worked on the flounces, until it was impossible to wait longer. I
meant to wear it at dinner the first day they came, with the pearl
necklace and the opal studs, and that heavy ruby necklace (it is a
low-necked dress). The dining-room at the “United States” is so large
that it shows off those dresses finely, and if the waiter doesn’t let
the soup or the gravy slip, and your neighbor, (who is, like as not,
what Tabby Dormouse, with her incapacity to pronounce the _r_,
calls “some ‘aw, ‘uff man from the country,”) doesn’t put the leg of
his chair through the dress, and if you don’t muss it sitting
down--why, I should like to know a prettier place to wear a low-necked
muslin, with jewels, than the dining-room of the “United States” at
Saratoga.

Kurz Pacha, the Sennaar minister, who was up there, and who is so
smitten with Mrs. Potiphar, said that he had known few happier moments
in this country than the dining hour at the “United States.”

“When the gong sounds,” says he, “I am reminded of the martial music
of Sennaar. When I seat myself in the midst of such splendor of
toilette, and in an apartment so stately and so appropriate for that
display, I recall the taste of the Crim Tartars, to whose ruler I had
the honor of being first accredited ambassador. When I behold, with
astonished eyes, the entrance of that sable society, the measured echo
of whose footfalls so properly silences the conversation of all the
nobles, I seem to see the regular army of my beloved Sennaar investing
a conquered city. This, I cry to myself, with enthusiasm, this is the
height of civilization; and I privately hand one of the privates in
that grand army, a gold dollar, to bring me a dish of beans. Each
green bean, O greener envoy extraordinary, I say to myself, with
rapture, should be well worth its weight in gold, when served to such
a congress of kings, queens, and hereditary prince royals as are
assembled here. And I find,” continues the Pacha, “that I am right.
The guest at this banquet is admitted to the freedom of corn and
potatoes, only after negotiations with the sable military. It is quite
the perfection of organization. What hints I shall gather for the
innocent pleasure-seekers of Sennaar who still fancy that when they
bargain for a draught of rose sherbet, they have tacitly agreed for a
glass to drink it from!

“Why, the first day I came,” he went on, “I was going to my room, and
met the chambermaid coming out. Now, as I had paid a colored gentleman
a dollar for my dinner, in addition to the little bill which I settle
at the office, I thought it was equally necessary to secure my bed by
a slight fee to the goddess of the chambers. I therefore pulled out my
purse, and offered her a bill of a small amount. She turned the color
of tomatoes.

“‘Sir,’ exclaimed she, and with dignity, ‘do you mean to insult me?’

“‘Good heavens, miss,’ cried I, ‘quite the contrary,’ and thinking it
was not enough, I presented another bill of a larger amount.

“‘Sir,’ said she, half sobbing, ‘you are no gentleman; I shall leave
the house!’

“I was very much perplexed. I began again:

“‘Miss--my dear--I mean madam--how much _must_ I pay you to
secure my room?’

“‘I don’t understand you, sir,’ replied the chambermaid, somewhat
mollified.

“‘Why, my dear girl, if I paid Sambo a dollar for my dinner, I expect
to pay Dolly something for my chamber, of course.’

“‘Well, sir, you are certainly very kind,--I--with pleasure, I’m
sure,’ replied she, entirely appeased, taking the money and vanishing.

“I,” said Kurz Pacha, “entered my room and locked the door. But I
believe I was a little hasty about giving her the money. The
perfection of civilization has not yet mounted the stairs. It is
confined to the dining-room. How beautiful is that strain from the
_Favorita_, Miss Minerva, tum, tum, ti ti, tum tum, tee tee,” and
the delightful Sennaar ambassador, seeing Mrs. Potiphar in the parlor,
danced humming away.

There are few pleasanter men in society. I should think with his
experience he would be hard upon us, but he is not. The air of courts
does not seem to have spoiled him.

“My dear madam,” he said one evening to Mrs. Potiphar, “if you laugh
at anything, your laughing is laughed at next day. Life is short. If
you can’t see the jewel in the toad’s head, still believe in it. Take
it for granted. The _Parisienne_ says that the English woman has
no _je ne sais quoi_, The English woman says the _Parisienne_ has no
_aplomb_. Amen! When you are in Turkey--why gobble. Why should I
decline to have a good time at the Queen’s drawing-room, because
English women have no _je ne sais quoi_, or at the grand opera,
because French women lack _aplomb_? Take things smoothly. Life is a
merry-go-round. Look at your own grandfather, dear Mrs.
Potiphar,--fine old gentleman, I am told,--rather kept in what the
artists call the middle-distance, at present,--a capital shoemaker, who
did his work well--Alexander and John Howard did no more:--well here you
are, you see, with liveries and a pew in the right church, and
altogether a front seat in the universe--merry-go-round, you know; here
we go up, up, up; here we go down, down, down, etc. By the bye, pretty
strain that from Linda; tum tum, ti, tum tum,” and away hopped the
Sennaar minister.

Mrs. Potiphar was angry. Who wouldn’t have been? To have the old
family shoes thrown in one’s teeth! But our ambassador is an
ambassador. One must have the best society, and she swallowed it as
she has swallowed it a hundred times before. She quietly remarked--

“Pity Kurz Pacha drinks so abominably. He quite forgets what he’s
saying!”

I suppose he does, if Mrs. P. says so; but he seems to know well
enough all the time: as he did that evening in the library at
Mrs. Potiphar’s, when he drew Cerulea Bass to the book-shelves, and
began to dispute about a line in Milton, and then suddenly looking up
at the books, said--

“Ah! there’s Milton; now we’ll see.” But when he opened the case,
which was foolishly left unlocked, he took down only a bit of wood,
bound in blue morocco, which he turned slowly over, so that everybody
saw it, and then quietly returned it to the shelf saying only--

“I beg pardon.”

Old Pot, as Mrs. P. calls him, happened to be passing at the moment,
and cried out in his brusque way--

“Oh! I haven’t laid in my books yet. Those are only
samples--pattern-cards, you know. I don’t believe you’ll find there a
single book that a gentleman’s library shouldn’t be without. I got old
Vellum to do the thing up right, you know. I guess he knows about the
books to buy. But I’ve just laid in some claret that you’ll like, and
I’ve got a sample of the Steinberg. Old Corque understands that kind
of thing, if anybody does.” And the two gentlemen went off to try the
wine.

I am astonished that a man of Kurz Pacha’s tact should have opened the
book-case. People have no right to suppose that the pretty bindings on
one’s shelves are books. Why, they might as well insist upon trying if
the bloom on one’s cheek, or the lace on one’s dress, or, in fact,
one’s figure, were real. Such things are addressed to the eye. No
gentleman uses his hands in good society. I’ve no doubt they were
originally put into gloves to keep them out of mischief.

I am as bad as dear Mrs. Potiphar about coming to the point of my
story. But the truth is, that in such engrossing places as Saratoga
and Newport, it is hardly possible to determine which is the
pleasantest and most important thing among so many. I am so fond of
that old, droll Kurz Pacha, that if I begin to talk about him I forget
everything else. He says such nice things about people that nobody
else would dare to say, and that everybody is so glad to hear. He is
invaluable in society. And yet one is never safe. People say he isn’t
gentlemanly; but when I see the style of man that is called
gentlemanly, I am very glad he is not. All the solemn, pompous men who
stand about like owls, and never speak, nor laugh, nor move, as if
they really had any life or feeling are called “gentlemanly.” Whenever
Tabby says of a new man--“But then he is so gentlemanly!” I
understand at once. It is another case of the well-dressed wooden
image. Good heavens! do you suppose Sir Philip Sidney, or the
Chevalier Bayard or Charles Fox, were “gentlemanly” in this way?
Confectioners who undertake parties might furnish scores of such
gentlemen, with hands and feet of any required size, and warranted to
do nothing “ungentlemanly.” For my part, I am inclined to think that a
gentleman is something positive, not merely negative. And if sometimes
my friend the Pacha says a rousing and wholesome truth, it is none the
less gentlemanly because it cuts a little. He says it’s very amusing
to observe how coolly we play this little farce of life,--how placidly
people get entangled in a mesh at which they all rail, and how
fiercely they frown upon anybody who steps out of the ring. “You
tickle me and I’ll tickle you; but at all events, you tickle me,” is
the motto of the crowd.

“_Allons!_” says he, “who cares? lead off to the right and
left--down the middle and up again. Smile all round, and bow
gracefully to your partner; then carry your heavy heart up chamber,
and drown in your own tears. Cheerfully, cheerfully, my dear Miss
Minerva.--Saratoga until August, then Newport till the frost, the city
afterwards; and so an endless round of happiness.”

And he steps off humming _Il segreto per esser felice!_

Well, we were all sitting in the great drawing-room at the “United
States.” We had been bowling in our morning dresses, and had rushed in
to ascertain if the distinguished English party had arrived. They had
not. They were in New York, and would not come. That was bad, but we
thought of Newport and probable scions of nobility there, and were
consoled. But while we were in the midst of the talk, and I was
whispering very intimately with that superb and aristocratic Nancy
Fungus, who should come in but father, walking towards us with a
wearied air, dragging his feet along, but looking very well dressed
for him. I smiled sweetly when I saw that he was quite presentable,
and had had the good sense to leave that odious white hat in his room,
and had buttoned his waistcoat. The party stopped talking as he
approached; and he came up to me.

“Minna, my dear,” said he, “I hear everybody is going to Newport.

“Oh! yes, dear father,” I replied, and Nancy Fungus smiled. Father
looked pleased to see me so intimate with a girl he always calls “so
aristocratic and high-bred looking,” and he said to her--

“I believe your mother is going, Miss Fungus?”

“Oh! yes, we always go,” replied she, “one must have a few weeks at
Newport.”

“Precisely, my dear,” said poor papa, as if he rather dreaded it, but
must consent to the hard necessity of fashion. “They say, Minna, that
all the _parvenus_ are going this year, so I suppose we shall
have to go along.”

There was a blow! There was perfect silence for a moment, while poor
pa looked amiable as if he couldn’t help embellishing his conversation
with French graces. I waited in horror; for I knew that the girls
were all tittering inside, and every moment it became more
absurd. Then out it came. Nancy Fungus leaned her head on my shoulder,
and fairly shook with laughter. The others hid behind their fans, and
the men suddenly walked off to the windows and slipped on to the
piazza. Papa looked bewildered, and half smiled. But it was a very
melancholy business, and I told him that he had better go up and dress
for dinner.

It was impossible to stay after that. The unhappy slip became the
staple of Saratoga conversation. Young Boosey (Mrs. Potiphar’s witty
friend) asked Morris audibly at dinner, “Where do the _parvenus
sit?_ I want to sit among the _parvenus_.”

“Of course you do, sir,” answered Morris, supposing he meant the
circle of the _crême de la crême_.

{Illustration}

And so the thing went on multiplying itself. Poor papa doesn’t
understand it yet, I don’t dare to explain. Old Fungus who prides
himself so upon his family (it is one of the very ancient and
honorable Virginia families, that came out of the ark with Noah, as
Kurz Pacha says of his ancestors when he hears that the founder of a
family “came over with the Conqueror,”) and who cannot deny himself a
joke, came up to pa in the bar-room, while a large party of gentlemen
were drinking cobblers, and said to him with a loud laugh:

“So all the _parvenus_ are going to Newport: are they, Tattle?”

“Yes!” replied pa, innocently, “that’s what they say. So I suppose we
shall all have to go, Fungus.”

There was another roar that time, but not from the representative of
Noah’s Ark. It was rather thin joking but it did very well for the
warm weather, and I was glad to hear a laugh against anybody but poor
pa.

We came to Newport, but the story came before us, and I have been very
much annoyed at it. I know it is foolish for me to think of it. Kurz
Pacha said:

“My dear Miss Minerva, I have no doubt it would pain you more to be
thought ignorant of French than capable of deceit. Yet it is a very
innocent ignorance of your father’s. Nobody is bound to know French;
but you all lay so much stress upon it, as if it were the whole duty
of women to have an ‘air’ and to speak French, that any ignorance
becomes at once ludicrous. It’s all your own doing. You make a very
natural thing absurd, and then grieve because some friend becomes a
victim. There is your friend Nancy Fungus, who speaks ‘French as well
as she does English.’ That may be true; but you ought to add, that one
is of just as much use to her as the other--that is of no use at all,
except to communicate platitudes. What is the use of a girl’s learning
French to be able to say to young _Téle de Choux_, that it is a
very warm day, and that will hardly be _spirituelle_ in her
exotic French. It edge of French is going to supply her with ideas to
express. A girl who is flat in her native English will hardly be
_spirituelle_ in her exotic French. It is a delightful language
for the natives, and for all who have thoroughly mastered its
spirit. Its genius is airy and sparkling. It is especially the
language of society, because society is, theoretically, the playful
encounter of sprightliness and wit. It is the worst language I know of
for poetry, ethics, and the habit of the Saxon mind. It is wonderful
in the hands of such masters as Balzac and George Sand, and is
especially adapted to their purposes. Yet their books are forbidden to
Nancy Fungus, Tabby Dormouse, Daisy Clover, and all their relations.
They read _Telemaque_, and long to be married, that they may pry
into _Leila and Indiana_: their French meanwhile, even if they
wanted to know anything of French literature,--which is too absurd an
idea,--serves them only to say nothing to uncertain hairy foreigners
who haunt society, and to understand their nothings, in response. I am
really touched for this Ariel, this tricksy sprite of speech when I
know that it must do the bidding of those who can never fit its airy
felicity to any worthy purpose. I have tried these accomplishel
damsels who speak French and Italian as well as they do English. But
our conversation was only a clumsy translation of English
commonplace. And yet, Miss Minerva, I think even so sensible a woman
as you, looks with honor and respect upon one of that class. Dear me!
excuse me! What am I thinking of? I’m engaged to drive little Daisy
Clover on the beach at six o’clock. She is one of those who garnish
their conversation with French scraps. Really you must pardon me, if
she is a friend of yours; but that dry gentlemanly fellow, D’Orsay
Firkin, says that Miss Clover’s conversation is a dish of _téte de
veau farci_. Aren’t you coming to the beach? Everybody goes
to-day. Mrs. Gnu has arrived, and the Potiphars are here,--that is,
Mrs. P. Old Pot. arrives on Sunday morning early, and is off again on
Monday evening. He’s grown very quiet and docile. Mrs. P. usually
takes him a short drive on Monday morning, and he comes to dinner in a
white waistcoat. In fact, as Mrs. Potiphar says, ‘My husband has not
the air _distingué_ which I should be pleased to see in him, but
he is quite as well as could be expected.’ Upon which Firkin twirls
his hat in a significant way; you and I smile intelligently, dear Miss
Minerva; Mrs. Green and Mrs Settum Downe exchange glances; we all
understand Mrs. Potiphar and each other, and Mrs. Potiphar understands
us, and it is all very sweet and pleasant, and the utmost propriety is
observed, and we don’t laugh loud until we’re out of hearing, and then
say in the very softest whispers, that it was a remarkably true
observation. This is the way to take life, my dear lady. Let us go
gently. Here we go backwards and forwards. You tickle, and I’ll
tickle, and we’ll all tickle, and here we go round--round--roundy!”

And the Sennaar minister danced out of the room.

He is a droll man, and I don’t quite understand him. Of course I don’t
entirely like him for it always seems as if he meant something a
little different from what he says. Laura Larmes, who reads all the
novels, and rolls her great eyes around the ball room,--who laughs at
the idea of such a girl as Blanche Amory in Pendennis,--who would be
pensive if she were not so plump,--who likes “nothing so much as
walking on the cliff by moonlight,”--who wonders that girls should
want to dance on warm summer nights when they have Nature, “and such
nature” before them,--who, in fact, would be a mere emotion if she
were not a bouncing girl,--Laura Larmes wonders that any man can be
so happy as Kurz Pacha.

“Ah! Kurz Pacha,” she says to him as they stroll upon the piazza,
after he has been dancing (for the minister dances, and swears it is
essential to diplomacy to dance well), “are you really so very happy?
Is it possible you can be so gay? Do you find nothing mournful in
life?”

“Nothing, my best Miss Laura,” he replies, “to speak of; as somebody
said of religion. You, who devote yourself to melancholy, the moon,
and the source of tears, are not so very sad as you think. You cry a
good deal, I don’t doubt. But when grief goes below tears, and forces
you in self-defence to try to forget it, not to sit and fondle
it,--then you will understand more than you do now. I pity those of
your sex upon whom has fallen the reaction of wealth,--for whom there
is no career,--who must sit at home and pine in a splendid ennui,--who
have learned and who know, spite of sermons and ‘sound sensible view
of things,’ that to enjoy the high ‘privilege of reading books,--of
cultivating their minds; and, when they are married, minding their
babies, and ministering to the drowsy, after-dinner ease of their
husbands, is not the fulfilment of their powers and hopes. But, my
amiable Miss Larmes, this is a class of girls and women who are not
solicitous about wearing black when their great-aunt in Denmark dies,
whom they never saw, nor when the only friend who made heaven possible
to them, falls dead at their sides. Nor do they avoid Mrs. Potiphar’s
balls as a happiness which they are not happy enough to enjoy--nor do
they suppose that all who attend that festivity--dancing to Mrs. P.’s
hired music and drinking Mr. P.’s fines wines--are utterly given over
to hilarity and superficial enjoyment. I do not even think they would
be likely to run--with rounded eyes, deep voice, and in very exuberant
health--to any one of us jaded votaries of fashion, and say, How can
you be so happy? My considerate young friend, ‘strong walls do not a
prison make’--nor is a man necessarily happy because he hops. You are
certainly not unhappy because you make eyes at the moon, and adjudge
life to be vanity and vexation. Your mind is only obscured by a few
morning vapors. They are evanescent as the dew, and when you remember
them at evening they will seem to you but as pensive splendors of the
dawn.”

Laura has her revenge for all this snubbing, of course. She does not
attempt to disguise her opinion that Kurz Pacha is a man of “foreign
morals,” as she well expresses it. “A very gay, agreeable man, who
glides gently over the surface of things, but knows nothing of the
real trials and sorrows of life,” says the melancholy Laura Larmes,
whose appetite continues good, and who fills a large armchair
comfortably.

It is my opinion, however, that people of a certain size should
cultivate the hilarious rather than the unhappy. Diogenes, with the
proportions of Alderman Gobble, could not have succeeded as a Cynic.

Here at Newport there is endless opportunity of detecting these little
absurdities of our fellow-creatures. In fact, one of the greatest
charms of a watering-place, to me, is the facility one enjoys of
understanding the whole game, which is somewhat concealed in the
city. Watering-place life is a full dress parade of social
weaknesses. We all enjoy a kind of false intimacy, an accidental
friendship. Old Carbuncle and young Topaz meet on the common ground
of a good cigar. Mrs. Peony and Daisy Clover are intimate at all
hours. Why? Because, on the one hand, Mrs. P. knows that youth, and
grace and beauty, are attractive to men, and that if Miss Rosa Peony,
her daughter, has not those advantages, it is well to have in the
neighborhood a magnet strong enough to draw the men.

On the other hand, Daisy Clover is a girl of good sense enough to
know--even if she didn’t know it by instinct--that men in public
places like the prestige of association with persons of acknowledged
social position, which, by hook or by crook, Mrs. Peony undoubtedly
enjoys. Therefore, to be of Mrs. P.’s party is to be well placed in
the catalogue--the chances are fairer--the gain is surer. Upon seeing
Daisy Clover with quiet little Mrs. Clover, or plain old aunt
Honeysuckle,--people would inquire, Who are the Clovers? And no one
would know. But to be with Mrs. Peony, morning, noon, and night, is to
answer all questions of social position.

But, unhappily, in the city things are changed. There no attraction
is necessary but the fine house, gay parties, and understood rank of
Mrs. Peony to draw men to Miss Rosa’s side. In Newport it does very
well not to dance with her. But in the city it doesn’t do not to be at
Mrs. Peony’s ball. Who knows it so well as that excellent lady?
Therefore darling Daisy is dropped a little when we all return.

“Sweet girl,” Mrs. P. says, “really a delightful companion for Rosa in
the summer, and the father and mother are such nice, excellent
people. Not exactly people that one knows, to be sure--but Miss Daisy
is really amiable and quite accomplished.”

Daisy goes to an occasional party at the Peonys. But at the opera and
the theatre, and at the small intimate parties of Rosa and her
friends, the darling Daisy of Newport is not visible. However, she has
her little revenges. She knows the Peonys well: and can talk
intelligently about them, which puts her quite on a level with them in
the estimation of her own set. She rules in the lower sphere if not in
the higher, and Daisy Clover is in the way of promotion. Yes, and if
she be very rich, and papa and mamma are at all presentable, or if
they can be dexterously hushed up, there is no knowing but Miss Daisy
Clover will suddenly bloom upon the world as Mrs. P.’s daughter-in-law,
wife of that “gentlemanly” young man, Mr. Puffer Peony.

Naturally it pains me very much to be obliged to think so of the
people with whom I associate. But I suppose they are as good as
any. As Kurz Pacha says: “If I fly from a Chinaman because he wears
his hair long like a woman, I must equally fly the Frenchman because
he shaves his like a lunatic. The story of Jack Spratt is the
apologue of the world.” It is astonishing how intimate he is with our
language and literature. By-the-bye, that Polly Potiphar has been mean
enough to send out to Paris for the very silk that I relied upon as
this summer’s _cheval de bataille_, and has just received it
superbly made up. The worst of it is that it is just the thing for
her. She wore it at the hall the other night, and expected to have
crushed me, in mine. Not she! I have not summered it at Newport
for--well, for several years, for nothing, and although I am rather
beyond the strict white muslin age, I thought I could yet venture a
bold stroke. So I arrayed _à la_ Daisy Clover--not too much,
_pas trop jeune_. And awaited the onset.

Kurz Pacha saw me across the room, and came up, with his peculiar
smile. He did not look at my dress, but he said to me, rather
wickedly, looking at my bouquet:

“Dear me! I hardly hoped to see spring flowers so late in the summer.”

Then he raised his eyes to mine, and I am conscious that I blushed.

“It’s very warm. You feel very warm, I am sure, my dear Miss Tattle,”
 he continued, looking straight at my face.

“You are sufficiently cool, at least, I think,” replied I. -- “Naturally,” said he, “for I’ve been in the immediate vicinity of the
boreal pole for half an hour--a neighborhood in which, I am told, even
the most ardent spirits sometimes freeze--so you must pardon me if I
am more than usually dull, Miss Minerva.”

And the Pacha beat time to the waltz with his head.

I looked at the part of the room from which he had just come, and
there, sure enough, in the midst of a group, I saw the tall, and
stately, and still Ada Aiguille.

“He is a hardy navigator,” continued Kurz Pacha, “who sails for the
boreal pole. It is glittering enough, but shipwreck by daylight upon a
coral reef, is no pleasanter than by night upon Newport shoals.”

“Have you been shipwrecked, Kurz Pacha?” asked I suddenly.

He laughed softly: “No, Miss Minerva, I am not one of the hardy
navigators; I keep close in to the shore. Upon the slightest symptom
of an agitated sea, I furl my sails, and creep into a safe harbor.
Besides, dear Miss Minna I prefer tropical cruises to the Antarctic
voyage.”

And the old wretch actually looked at my black hair. I might have said
something--approving his taste, perhaps, who knows?--when I saw
Mrs. Potiphar. She was splendidly dressed in the silk, and it’s a
pity she doesn’t become a fine dress better. She made for me
directly.

“Dear Minna, I’m so glad to see you. Why how young and fresh you look
to-night. Really, quite blooming! And such a sweet pretty dress, too,
and the darling baby-waist and all--”

“Yes,” said that witty Gauche Boosey, “permit me, Miss Tattle,--quite
an incarnate seraphim, upon my word.”

“You are too good,” replied I, “my dear Polly, it is your dress which
deserves admiration, and I flatter myself in saying so, for it is the
very counterpart of one I had made some months ago.”

“Yes, darling, and which you have not yet worn,” replied she. “I said
to Mr. P., ‘Mr. P.’ said I, ‘there are few women upon whose amiability
I can count as I can upon Minerva Tattle’s, and, therefore, I am going
to have a dress like hers. Most women would be vexed about it, and say
ill-natured things if I did so. But if I have a friend, it is Minerva
Tattle; and she will never grudge it to me for a moment.’ It’s
pretty; isn’t it? Just look here at this trimming.”

And she showed me the very handsomest part of it, and so much
handsomer than mine, that I can never wear it.

“Polly, I am so glad you know me so well,” said I. “I’m delighted with
the dress. To be sure, it’s rather _prononce_ for your style; but
that’s nothing.”

Just then a polka struck up. “Come along! give me this turn,” said
Boosey, and putting his arm round Mrs. Potiphar’s waist, he whirled
her off into the dance.

How I did hope that somebody would come to ask me. Nobody came.

“You don’t dance?” asked Kurz Pacha, who stood by during my little
talk with Polly P.

“Oh, yes,” answered I, and hummed the polka.

Kurz Pacha hummed too, looked on at the dancers a few minutes then
turned to me, and looking at my bouquet, said:

“It is astonishing how little taste there is for spring-flowers.”

At that moment young Croesus “came in” warm with the whirl of the
dance, with Daisy Clover.

“It’s very warm,” said he, in a gentlemanly manner.

“Dear me! yes, very warm,” said Daisy.

“Been long in Newport?”

“No; only a few days. We always come, after, Saratoga for a couple of
weeks. But isn’t it delightful?”

“Quite so,” said Timon, coolly, and smiling at the idea of anybody’s
being enthusiastic about anything. That elegant youth has pumped life
dry; and now the pump only wheezes.

“Oh!” continued Daisy, “it’s so pleasant to run away from the hot
city, and breathe this cool air. And then Nature is so beautiful. Are
you fond of Nature, Mr. Croesus?”

“Tolerably,”’ returned Timon.

“Oh! but Mr. Croesus! to go to the glen and skip stones, and then walk
on the cliff, and drive to Bateman’s, and the fort, and to go to the
beach by moonlight; and then the bowling-alley, and the archery, and
the Germania. Oh! it’s a splendid place. But perhaps, you don’t like
natural scenery, Mr. Croesus?”

“Perhaps not,” said Mr. Croesus.

“Well, some people don’t,” said darling little Daisy, folding up her
fan, as if quite ready for another turn.

“Come, now; there it is,” said Timon, and, grasping her with his right
arm, they glided away.

“Kurz Pacha,” said I, “I wonder who sent Ada Aiguille that bouquet?”

“Sir John Franklin, I presume,” returned he.

“What do you mean by that,” asked I. -- Before he could answer, Boosey and Mrs. Potiphar stopped by us.

“No, no, Mr. Boosey,” panted Mrs. P., “I will not have him
introduced. They say his father actually sells dry goods by the yard
in Buffalo.”

“Well, but _he_ doesn’t, Mrs. Potiphar.

“I know that, and it’s all very well for you young men to know him,
and to drink, and play billiards, and smoke, with him. And he is
handsome to be sure, and gentlemanly, and I am told, very
intelligent. But, you know, we can’t be visiting our shoemakers and
shopmen. That’s the great difficulty of a watering-place, one doesn’t
know who’s who. Why Mrs. Gnu was here three summers ago, and there sat
next to her, at table, a middle-aged foreign gentleman, who had only a
slight accent, and who was so affable and agreeable, so intelligent
and modest, and so perfectly familiar with all kinds of little ways,
you know, that she supposed he was the Russian Minister, who, she
heard, was at Newport incognito for his health. She used to talk with
him in the parlor, and allowed him to join her upon the piazza.
Nobody could find out who he was. There were suspicions, of
course. But he paid his bills, drove his horses, and was universally
liked. Dear me! appearances are so deceitful! who do you think he
was?”

“I’m sure I can’t imagine.”

“Well, the next spring she went to a music store in Philadelphia, to
buy some guitar strings for Claribel, and who should advance to sell
them but the Russian Minister! Mrs. Gnu said she colored--”

“So I’ve always understood,” said Gauche, laughing.

“Fie! Mr. Boosey,” continued Mrs. P. smiling. “But the music-seller
didn’t betray the slightest consciousness. He sold her the strings,
received the money, and said nothing, and looked nothing. Just think
of it! She supposed him to be a gentleman, and he was really a
music-dealer. You see that’s the sort of thing one is exposed to here,
and though your friend may be very nice, it isn’t safe for me to know
him. In a country where there’s no aristocracy one can’t be too
exclusive. Mrs. Peony says she thinks that in future she shall really
pass the summer in a farm-house or if she goes to a watering-place,
confine herself to her own rooms and her carriage, and look at the
people through the blinds. I’m afraid, myself, it’s coming to
that. Everybody goes to Saratoga now, and you see how Newport is
crowded. For my part I agree with the Rev. Cream Cheese, that there
are serious evils in a republican form of government. What a hideous
head-dress that is of Mrs. Settum Downe’s! What a lovely
polka-redowa!”

“So it is, by Jove! Come on,” replied the gentlemanly Boosey, and they
swept down the hall.

“_Ah! ciel!_” exclaimed a voice close by us--Kurz Pacha and I
turned at the same moment. We beheld a gentleman twirling his
moustache and a lady fanning. They were smiling intelligently at each
other, and upon his whispering something that I could not hear, she
said, “_Fi! donc_” and folding her fan and laying her arm upon
his shoulder, they slid along again in the dance.

“Who is that?” inquired the Pacha.

“Don’t you know Mrs. Vite?” said I, glad of my chance. “Why, my dear
sir, she is our great social success. She shows what America can do
under a French _regime_. She performs for society the inestimable
service of giving some reality to the pictures of Balzac and George
Sand, by the quality of her life and manners. She is just what you
would expect a weak American girl to be who was poisoned by
Paris,--who mistook what was most obvious for what was most
characteristic,--whose ideas of foreign society and female habits were
based upon an experience of resorts, more renowned for ease than
elegance,--who has no instinct fine enough to tell her that a
_lionne_ cannot be a lady,--who imitates the worst manners of
foreign society, without the ability or opportunity of perceiving the
best,--who prefers a _double entendre_ to a _bon-mot_,--who
courts the applause of men whose acquaintance gentlemen are careless
of acknowledging,--who likes fast driving and dancing, low jokes, and
low dresses, who is, therefore, bold without wit, noisy without mirth,
and notorious without a desirable reputation. That is Mrs. Vite.”

Kurz Pacha rolled up his eyes.

“Good Jupiter! Miss Minerva,” cried he, “is this you that I hear? Why
you are warmer in your denunciation of this little wisp of a woman
than you ever were of fat old Madame Gorgon, with her prodigious paste
diamonds. Really, you take it too hard. And you, too, who used to
skate so nimbly over the glib surface of society, and cut such
coquettish figures of eight upon the characters of your friends. You
must excuse me, but it seems to me odd that Miss Minerva Tattle, who
used to treat serious things so lightly, should now be treating light
things so seriously. You ought to frequent the comic opera more, and
dine with Mrs. Potiphar once a week. If your good humor can’t digest
such a _hors d’oeuvre_ as little Mrs. Vite, what will you do with
such a _pièce de résistance_ as Madame Gorgon?”

Odious plain speaker! Yet I like the man. But, before I could reply,
up came another couple--Caroline Pettitoes and Norman de Famille.

“You were at the bowling-alley?” said he.

“Yes,” answered Caroline.

“You saw them together?”

“Yes.”

“Well, what do you think?”

“Why, of course, that if he is not engaged to her he ought to be. He
has taken her out in his wagon three times, he has sent her four
bouquets, he waltzes with her every night, he bowls with her party
every morning, and if that does not mean that he wants to marry her, I
should like to know what it does mean,” replied Caroline, tossing her
head.

Norman de Famille smiled, and Caroline continued with rather a flushed
face, because Norman had been doing very much the same thing with her:

“What is a girl to understand by such attentions?”

“Why, that the gentleman finds it an amusing game, and hopes she is
equally pleased,” returned De Famille.

“_Merci_, M. de Famille,” said Caroline, with an energy I never
suspected in her, “and at the end of the game she may go break her
heart, I suppose.”

“Hearts are not so brittle, Miss Pettitoes,” replied Norman. “Besides,
why should you girls always play for such high stakes?”

They were just about beginning the waltz again, when the music
stopped, and they walked away. But I saw the tears in Caroline’s
eyes. I don’t know whether they were tears of vexation, or of
disappointment. The men have the advantage of us because they can
control their emotions so much better. I suppose Caroline blushed and
cried, because she found herself blushing and crying, quite as much as
because she fancied her partner didn’t care for her.

I turned to Kurz Pacha, who stood by my side, smiling, and rubbing his
hands.

“A charming evening we have had of it, Miss Minerva,” said he, “an
epitome of life--a kind of last-new-novel effect. The things that we
have heard and seen here, multiplied and varied by a thousand or so,
produce the net result of Newport. Given, a large house, music,
piazzas, beaches, cliff, port, griddle-cakes, fast horses,
sherry-cobblers, ten-pins, dust, artificial flowers, innocence,
worn-out hearts, loveliness, black-legs, bank-bills, small men, large
coat-sleeves, little boots, jewelry, and polka-redowas _ad
libitum_, to produce August in Newport. For my part, Miss Minerva,
I like it. But it is a dizzy and perilous game. I profess to seek and
enjoy emotions, so I go to watering-places. Ada Aiguille says she
doesn’t like it. She declares that she thinks less of her
fellow-creatures after she has been here a little while. She goes to
the city afterward to refit her faith, probably. Daisy Clover thinks
it’s heavenly. Darling little Daisy! life is an endless German
cotillion to her. She thinks the world is gay but well-meaning, is
sure that it goes to church on Sundays and never tells lies. Cerulea
Bass looks at it for a moment with her hard, round, ebony eyes, and
calmly wonders that people will make such fools of themselves. And
you, Miss Minerva, pardon me,--you come because you are in the habit
of coming--because you are not happy out of such society, and have a
tantalizing sadness in it. Your system craves only the piquant sources
of scandal and sarcasm, which can never satisfy it. You wish that you
liked tranquil pleasures and believed in men and women. But you get no
nearer than a wish. You remember when you did believe, but you
remember with a shudder and a sigh. You pass for a brilliant
woman. You go out to dinners and balls; and men are, what is called,
‘afraid of you.’ You scorn most of us. You are not a favorite, but
your pride is flattered by the very fear on the part of others which
prevents your being loved. Time and yourself are your only enemies,
and they are in league, for you betray yourself to him. You have found
youth the most fascinating and fatal of flirts, but he, although your
heart and hope clung to him despairingly, has jilted you and thrown
you by. Let him go, if you can, and throw after him the white muslin
and the baby-waist. Give up milk and the pastoral poets. Sail, at
least, under your own colors; even pirates hoist a black flag. An old
belle who endeavors to retain by sharp wit and spicy scandal the place
she held only in virtue of youth and spirited beauty is, in a new
circle of youth and beauty, like an enemy firing at you from the
windows of your own house. The difficulty of your position, dear Miss
Minerva, is, that you can never deceive those who alone are worth
deceiving. Daisy Clover and Young America, of course, consider you a
talented, tremendous kind of woman. Daisy Clover wonders all the men
are not in love with you. Young America sniffs and shakes its little
head, and says disapprovingly, ‘Strong-minded woman!’ But you fail,
you know, notwithstanding. You couldn’t bring old Potiphar to his
knees when he first came home from China, and he must needs plunge in
love with Miss Polly, whom you despised, but who has certainly
profited by her intimacy with Mrs. Gnu, Mrs. Croesus, and Mrs. Settum
Downe, as you saw by her conversation with you this evening.

“Ah, Miss Minerva, I am only a benighted diplomat from Sennaar, but
when I reflect upon all I see around me in your country; when I take
my place with terror in a railroad car, because the certainty of
frightful accidents fills all minds with the same vague apprehensions
as if a war were raging in the land; when I see the universal rush and
fury--young men who never smile, and who fall victims to paralysis;
old men who are tired of life and dread death; young women pretty and
incapable; old women listless and useless; and both young and old, if
women of sense, perishing of ennui, and longing for some kind of a
career;--why, I don’t say that it is better anywhere else,--perhaps it
isn’t,--in most ways it certainly is not. I don’t say certainly, that
there’s a higher tone of life in London or Paris than in New York, but
only that, whatever it may be there, this, at least, is rather a
miserable business.”

“What is your theory of life, then?” asked I. “What do you propose?”

Kurz Pacha smiled again.

{Illustration}

“Suppose, Miss Minerva, I say the Golden Rule is my _theory_ of
life. You think it vague; but it is in that like most theories. Then I
propose that we shall all be good. Don’t you think it a feasible
proposition? I see that you think you have effectually disposed of all
complaint by challenging the complainer to suggest a remedy. But it is
clear to me that a man in the water has a right to cry out, although
he may not distinctly state how he proposes to avoid drowning. Your
reasoning is that of those excellent Americans who declare that
foreign nations ought not to strike for a republic until they are fit
for a republic--as if empires and monarchies founded colleges to
propagate democracy. Probably you think it wiser that men shouldn’t go
into the water until they can swim. Mr. Carlyle, I remember, was
bitterly reproached for grumbling in his “Chartism,” and other works,
as if a man had no moral right to complain of hunger until he had
grasped a piece of bread. ‘What do you propose to do, Mr. Carlyle?’
said they, ‘what with the Irish, for instance?’ Mr. C. said that he
would compel every Irishman to work, or he would sink the island in
the sea. ‘Barbarous man, this is your boasted reform!’ cried they in
indignant chorus, unsuited either way, and permitting the Irish to go
to the dogs in the meanwhile. So suffer me, dearest Miss Minerva, to
regret a state of things which no sensible man can approve. Even if it
seems to you light, allow me, at least, to treat it seriously, nor
suppose I love anything less, because I would see it better. You are
the natural fruit of this state of things, O Minerva Tattle! By thy
fruits ye shall know them.”

After a few moments, he added in the old way:

“Don’t think I am going to break my heart about it, nor lose my
appetite. Look at the absurdity of the whole thing. I am preaching to
you in your baby-waist, here in a Newport ball-room at midnight. I
humbly beg your pardon. There are more potent preachers here than
I. Besides, I’m engaged to Mrs. Potiphar’s supper at 12. Take things
more gently, dear Miss Minerva. Don’t make faces at Mrs. Vite, nor
growl at your darling Polly. Women as smart as you are, will say
precisely as smart thing of you as you say of them. We shall all
laugh, first with you, and then at you. But don’t deny yourself the
pleasure of saying the smart things in hope that they will also
refrain. That’s vanity, not virtue. People are much better than you
think, but they are also much worse. I might have been king of
Sennaar, but I am only his ambassador. You might have been only a
chambermaid, but you are the brilliant and accomplished Miss
Tattle. Tum, tum, tum, ti, ti, ti,--what a pretty waltz! Here come
Daisy and Timon Croesus, and now Mrs. Potiphar and Gauche Boosey, and
now again Caroline Pettitoes and De Famille. She is smiling again, you
see. She darts through the dance like a sunbeam as she is. Caroline is
a philosopher. Just now, you remember, it was down, down, down,--now
it is up, up, up. It is a good world, if you don’t rub it the wrong
way. Sit in the sun as much as possible. One preserves one’s
complexion, but gets so cold in the shade. Ah! there comes
Mrs. Potiphar. Why, she is radiant! She shakes her fan at me. Adieu,
Miss Minerva. Sweet dreams. To-morrow morning at the Bowling Alley at
eleven, you know, and the drive at six. _Au revoir_.”

And he was gone. The ball was breaking up. A few desperate dancers
still floated upon the floor. The chairs were empty. The women were
shawling, and the men stood attendant with bouquets. I went to a
window and looked out. The moon was rising, a wan, waning moon. The
broad fields lay dark beneath, and as the music ceased, I heard the
sullen roar of the sea. If my heart ached with an indefinite
longing,--if it felt that the airy epicurism of the Pacha was but a
sad cynicism, masquerading in smiles,--if I dreaded to ask whether the
wisest were not the saddest,--if the rising moon, and the plunging
sea, and the silence of midnight, were mournful, if I envied Daisy
Clover her sweet sleep and vigorous waking,--why, no one need ever
know it, nor suspect that the brilliant Minerva Tattle is a failure.




V. -- THE POTIPHARS IN PARIS.


A LETTER FROM MISS CAROLINE PETTITOES TO MRS. SETTUM DOWNE.

PARIS, _October_.

MY DEAR MRS. DOWNE,--Here we are at last! I can hardly believe
it. Our coming was so sudden that it seems like a delightful
dream. You know at Mrs. Potiphar’s supper last August in Newport, she
was piqued by Gauche Boosey’s saying, in his smiling, sarcastic way:

“What! do you really think this is a pretty supper? Dear me!
Mrs. Potiphar, you ought to see one of our _petits soupers_ in
Paris, hey Croesus?” and then he and Mr. Timon Croesus lifted their
brows knowingly, and smiled, and glanced compassionately around the
table.

“Paris, Paris!” cried Mrs. Potiphar; “you young men are always talking
about Paris, as if it were heaven. Oh! Mr. P., do take me to
Paris. Let’s make up a party, and slip over. It’s so easy now, you
know. Come, come, Pot. I know you won’t deny me. Just for two or three
months, The truth is,” said she, turning to D’Orsay Firkin, who wore
that evening the loveliest shirt-bosom I ever saw, “I want to send
home some patterns of new dresses to Minerva Tattle.”

They all laughed, and in the midst Kurz Pacha, who was sitting at the
side of Mrs. Potiphar, inquired:

“What colors suit the Indian summer best, Mrs. Potiphar?”

“Well, a kind of misty color,” said Boosey, laughingly, and
emphasizing _missed_, as if he meant some pun upon the word.

“Which conceals the outline of the landscape,” interrupted Mrs. Gnu.

“Cajoling you with a sense of warmth on the very edge of winter, eh?”
 asked the Sennaar minister.

Another loud laugh rang round the table.

“I thought Minerva Tattle was a friend of yours, Kurz Pacha,” said
Mrs. Gnu, smiling mischievously, and playing with her beautiful
bouquet, which Mrs. Potiphar told me Timon Croesus had sent her.

“Certainly, so she is,” replied he. “Miss Minerva and I understand
each other perfectly. I like her society immensely. The truth is, I am
always better in autumn; the air is both cool and bright.”

As he said this he looked fixedly at Mrs. Gnu, and there was not quite
so much laughing. I am sure I don’t know what they meant by talking
about autumn. I was busy talking with Mr. Firkin about Daisy Clover’s
pretty morning dress at the Bowling Alley, and admiring his
shirt-bosom. Suddenly there was a knock at the door, and an exquisite
bouquet was handed in for Kurz Pacha.

“Why didn’t you wait until to-morrow?” said he, sharply.

The man stammered some excuse, and the ambassador took the
flowers. Mrs. Gnu looked at them closely, and praised them very much,
and quietly glanced at her own, which were really splendid. Kurz
Pacha showed them to all the ladies at table, and then handed them to
Mrs. Potiphar, saying to her, as he half looked at Mrs. Gnu:

“There is nothing autumnal here.”

“Mrs. Potiphar thanked him with real delight, and he turned toward
Mrs. Gnu, at whom he had been constantly looking, and who was playing
placidly with her bouquet, and said with an air of one paying a great
compliment:

“To offer _you_ a bouquet, madame, would be to throw pearls
before swine.”

We were all silent for a moment, and then the young men sprang up
together, while we women laughed, half afraid.

“Good heavens! Kurz Pacha, what do you mean?” cried Mrs. Potiphar.

“Mean?” answered he, evidently confused, and blushing; “why, I’m
afraid I have made some mistake. I meant to say something very
polite, but my English sometimes gives way.”

“Your impudence never does,” muttered Mrs. Gnu, who was unbecomingly
red in the face.

“My dear madame,” said the minister to her, “I assure you I meant only
to use a proverb in a complimentary way; but somehow I have got the
wrong pig by the ear.”

There was another burst of laughter. The young men fairly lay down and
screamed. Mr. Potiphar exploded in great ha ha’s and ho ho’s, from the
end of the table.

“Mrs. Potiphar,” said Mrs. Gnu, with dignity, “I didn’t suppose I was
to be insulted at your table.”

And she went toward the door.

“Mrs. Gnu, Mrs. Gnu,” said Polly, smothering her laughter as well as
she could, “don’t go. Kurz Pacha will explain. I’m sure he means no
insult.”

Here she burst out laughing again; while the poor Sennaar Ambassador
stood erect, and utterly confounded by what was going on.

“I’m sure--I didn’t know--I didn’t--I wouldn’t--Mrs. Gnu knows;” said
he, in the greatest embarrassment. “I beg your pardon sincerely,
madame.” And he looked so humble and repentant that I was really
sorry for him; but I saw Mr. Firkin laughing afresh every time he
looked at the Ambassador, as if he saw something sly behind his
penitence.

“Perhaps,” said Firkin at last, “Kurz Pacha means to say that to offer
flowers to a lady who has already so beautiful a bouquet, would be to
carry coals to Newcastle.”

“That is it,” cried the Pacha; “to Newcastle,”--and he bowed to
Mrs. Gnu.

“Come, Mrs. Gnu, it’s only a mistake,” said Mrs. Potiphar.

But Mrs. Gnu looked rather angry still, although Gauche Boosey tried
very hard to console her, saying as many _bon mots_ as he could
think of--and you know how witty he is. He said at last;

“Why is Mrs. Gnu like Rachel?”

“Rachel who?” asked I. -- I’m sure it was an innocent question; but they all fell to laughing
again, and Mr. Firkin positively cried with fun.

“D’ye give it up?” asked Mr. Boosey.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Potiphar.

“Why, because she will not be comforted.”

There wasn’t half so much laughing at this as at my question--although
Mrs. Potiphar said it was capital, and I thought so too, when I found
out who Rachel was.

But Mrs. Gnu continued to be like Rachel, and Mr. Boosey continued to
try to amuse her. I think it was very hard she wouldn’t be amused by
such a funny man; and he said at last aloud to her, meaning all of us
to hear:

“Well, Mrs. Gnu, upon my honor, it is no epicure to try to console
you.”

She did laugh at this, however, and so did the others.

“Have you ever been in Sennaar, Mr. Boosey?” said Kurz Pacha.

“No; why?”

“Why, I thought we might have learned English at the same school.”

Mr. Boosey looked puzzled; but Mr. Potiphar broke in:

“Well, Mrs. Gnu, I’m glad to see you smile at last. After all, the
remark of the Ambassador’s was only what they would call in France, ‘a
perfect bougie of a joke.’”

“Good evening, Mrs. Potiphar,” cried the Sennaar Minister, rising
suddenly, and running toward the door. We heard him next under the
window going off in great shouts of laughter, and whistling in the
intervals, “Hail Columbia!” What shocking habits he has for a
minister! I don’t know how it was that Mr. Potiphar was in such good
humor; but he promised his wife that she should go to Paris, and that
she might select her party. So she invited us all who were at the
table. Mrs. Gnu declined: but I knew mamma would let me go with the
Potiphars.

“Dear Pot.,” said Mrs. P., “we shall be gone so short a time, and
shall be so busy, and hurrying from one place to another, that we had
better leave little Freddy behind. Poor, dear little fellow, it will
be much better for him to stay.”

Mr. P. looked a little sober at this; but he said nothing except to
ask:

“Shall you all be ready to sail in a fortnight?”

“Certainly, in a week,” we all answered.

“Well, then, we must hurry home to prepare,” said he. “I shall write
for state-rooms for us in Monday’s boat, Polly.”

“Very well; that’s a dear Pot.,” said she; and as we all rose she went
up to him, and took his arm tenderly. It was an unusual sight: I never
saw her do it before. Mrs. Gnu said to me:

“Well, really, that’s rather peculiar. I think people had better make
love in private.”

“No, by Jove,” whispered Mr. Boosey to me; “and I am afraid he had
drank freely, as I have once or twice before heard that he did; but
the world is such a gossip!--no, she doesn’t let _her_ good works
of that kind shine before men.”

“Why, Mr. Boosey,” said I, “how can you?”

“Will you believe, darling Mrs. Downe, that instead of answering, he
sort of winked at me, and said, under his voice, ‘Good night,
Caroline.’ I drew myself up, you may depend, and said coldly:

“Good evening, Mr. Boosey.”

He drew himself up too, and said:

“I called you Caroline, you called me Mr. Boosey.”

And then looking straight and severely at me, he actually winked
again.

Then of course, I knew he was not responsible for his actions.

Ah me, what things we are! Just as I was leaving the room with
Mrs. Gnu, who had matronized me, Mr. Boosey came up with such a soft,
pleading look in his eyes that seemed to say, “please forgive me,” and
put out his hand so humbly, and appeared so sorry and so afraid that I
would not speak to him, that I really pitied him: but when, in his
low, rich voice, he said:

“Nymph, in thy orisons be all my sins remembered!”--

I couldn’t hold out; wasn’t it pretty? So I put out my hand, and he
shook it tenderly, and said “tomorrow” in a way--well, dear
Mrs. Downe, I will be frank with you--that made me happy all night.

At this rate I shall never get to Paris. But the next day it was known
everywhere we were going and everybody congratulated us. Our party met
at the Bowling Alley, and we began to make all kinds of plans.

“Oh! _we’ll_ take care of all the arrangements,” said Mr. Boosey,
nodding toward Mr. Croesus and Mr. Firkin.

“Mr. Boosey, were you presented to the Emperor?” inquired Kurz Pacha.

“Certainly I was,” replied he; “I have a great respect for Louis
Napoleon. Those Frenchmen didn’t know what they wanted; but he knew
well enough what he wanted: they didn’t want him, perhaps, but he did
want them, and now he has them. A true nephew of his uncle, Kurz
Pacha; and you can see what a man the great Napoleon must have been,
when the little Napoleon succeeds so well upon the strength of the
name.”

“Why, you are really enthusiastic about the Emperors,” said the
Ambassador.

“Certainly,” replied Mr. Boosey, “I have always been a great
Neapolitan.”

Kurz Pacha stared at him a moment, and then took a large pinch of
snuff solemnly. I think it’s very ill bred to stare as he does
sometimes, when somebody has made a remark. I saw nothing particular
in that speech of Mr. Boosey’s; and yet D’Orsay Firkin smiled to
himself as he told Mrs. Gnu it was her turn.

“I wonder, my dear Mrs. Potiphar,” said the Sennaar Minister seating
himself by her side, as the game went on, “that Europeans should have
so poor an idea of America and Americans, when such crowds of the very
best society are constantly crossing the ocean. Now, you and your
friends are going to Paris, perhaps to other parts of Europe, and I
should certainly suppose that, without flattery, (taking another pinch
of snuff,) the foreigners whom you meet might get rid of some of their
prejudices against the Americans. You will go, you know, as the
representatives of a republic where social ranks are not organized to
the exclusion of any; but where talent and character always secure
social consideration. The simplicity of the republican idea and
system will appear in your manners and modes of life. Leaving to the
children of a society based upon antique and aristocratic principles,
to squander their lives in an aimless luxury, you will carry about
with you, as it were the fresh airs and virgin character of a new
country and civilization. When you go to Paris, it will be like a
sweet country breeze blowing into a perfumer’s shop. The customers
will scent something finer than the most exquisite essence, and will
prefer the fresh fragrance of the flower to the most elaborate
distillation. Roses smell sweeter than attar of roses. You and your
party, estimable lady, will be the roses. You will not (am I right
_this_ time?) carry coals to Newcastle; for if any of your
companions think that the sharp eye of Paris will not pierce their
pretensions, or the satiric tongue of Paris fail to immortalize it,
they mistake greatly. You cannot beat Paris with its own weapons; and
Paris will immensely respect you if you use your own. Poor little
Mrs. Vite thinks she passes for a _Parisienne_ in Paris. Why,
there is not a _chiffonier_ in the street at midnight that
couldn’t see straight through the little woman, and nothing would
better please the _Jardin Mabille_ than to have her for a
butt. My dear madame, the ape is a very ingenious animal, and his form
much resembles the human. Moles, probably, and the inhabitants of the
planet Jupiter, do not discern the difference; but I rather think we
do. A ten-strike by Venus! well done, Mrs. Gnu,” cried the Ambassador;
“now, Mrs. Potiphar.”

The Pacha didn’t play; but he asked Mr. Firkin what was a good average
for a man, in the game.

“Well, a spare every time,” said he.

“Mr. Firkin,” asked Mrs. Gnu, “what is a good woman’s average?”

“Does any lady here know that?” inquired the Pacha, looking round.

“No,” said Mr. Boosey; “we must send and inquire of Miss Tattle.”
 “How pleasantly the game goes on, dear Mrs. Gnu,” said the Pacha;
“but Miss Minerva ought to be here, she always holds such a good hand
at every game.”

“I think,” said Mrs. Gnu, “that if she once got a good hold of any
hand, she wouldn’t let it go immediately.”

“Good!” shouted Mr. Boosey.

“Hi! hi!” roared Mr. Potiphar.

The Pacha took snuff placidly, and said quietly:

“You’ve fairly trumped my trick, and taken it, Mrs. Gnu.”

“I should say the trick has taken her,” whispered Mr. Firkin at my
elbow to Kurz Pacha.

The Sennaar Ambassador opened his eyes wide, and offered Mr. Firkin
his snuff-box.

Monday came at length. It was well known that we were all going--the
Potiphars and the rest of us. Everybody had spoken of the difficulty
of getting state-rooms on the steamer to town, and hoped we had spoken
in time.

“I have written and secured my rooms,” said Mr. Potiphar to everybody
he met; “I am not to be left in the lurch, my dear sir, it isn’t my
way.” And then he marched on, Gauche Boosey said, as if at least both
sides of the street were his way. He’s changed a great deal lately.

The De Familles were going the same day. “Hope you’ve secured rooms,
De Famille,” said Mr. Potiphar blandly to him.

“No,” answered he, shortly; “no, not yet; it isn’t my way; I don’t
mean to give myself trouble about things; I don’t bother; it isn’t my
way.”

And each went his own way up and down the street. But early on Monday
afternoon Mr. De Famille and his family drove toward Fall Kiver, from
which place the boat starts.

Monday evening the Potiphars and the rest of us went to the wharf at
Newport, and presently the boat came up. We bundled on board, and as
soon as he could get to the office Mr. Potiphar asked for the keys of
his rooms.

“Why, sir,” said the clerk, “Mr. De Famille has them. He came on board
at Fall Eiver and asked for your keys, as if the rooms had been
secured for him.”

“What does that mean?” demanded Mr. Potiphar.

“Oh! ah! I remember now,” said Mr. Boosey. “I saw the De Familles all
getting into a carriage for a little drive, as Mr. De F., said, about
two o’clock this afternoon.”

Mr. Potiphar looked like a thunder-storm. “What the devil does it
mean?” asked he of the clerk, while the passengers hustled him, and
punched him, and the hook of an umbrella-stick caught in his
cravat-knot, and untied it.

“Send up immediately, and say that Mr. Potiphar wants his
state-rooms,” said he to the clerk.

In a few minutes the messenger returned and said--

“Mr. De Famille’s compliments to Mr. Potiphar. Mr. De Famille and his
family have retired for the night, but upon arriving in the morning he
will explain everything to Mr. Potiphar’s satisfaction.

“Jolly!” whispered Mr. Boosey, rubbing his hands, to Mr. Firkin, on
whose arm I was leaning.

“Are you fond of the Italian opera, Mr. Potiphar?” inquired Kurz
Pacha, blandly, Mrs. P. sat down upon a settee and looked at nothing.

“O Patience! do verify the quotation and smile,” said the Ambassador
to her.

“It’s a mean swindle,” said Mr. Potiphar. “I’ll have
satisfaction. I’ll go break open the door,” and he started.

“My dear, don’t be in a passion,” said Mrs. Potiphar, “and don’t be a
fool. Remember that the De Familles are not people to be insulted. It
won’t do to quarrel with the De Familles.”

“Splendid!” ejaculated Kurz Pacha.

“I’ve no doubt he’ll explain it all in the morning,” continued
Mrs. Potiphar, “there’s some mistake; why not be cool about it?
Besides, Mr. De Famille is an elderly gentleman and requires his
rest. I do think you’re positively unchristian, Mr. Potiphar. The
idea of insulting the De Familles!”

And Mrs. Potiphar patted her little feet upon the floor in front of
the ladies’ cabin, where we were all collected.

“Where are you going to sleep?” asked Mr. Potiphar mildly.

“I’m sure I don’t know,” answered she.

We had an awful night. It was worse than any night at sea. Mrs. P. was
propped up in one corner of a settee and I in the other, and when I
was fixed comfortably there would come a great sea, and the boat would
lurch, and I had to disarrange my position. It was horrid. But
Mr. Potiphar was very good all night. He kept coming to see if Polly
wanted anything, and if she were warm enough, and if she were
well. Gauche Boosey, who was on the floor in the saloon, said he saw
Mr. P. crawl up softly and try his state-room door. But it was locked,
“and the snoring of old De Famille, who was enjoying his required
rest,” said he, “came in regular broadsides through the blinds.”

I don’t know how Mr. De Famille explained. I only know Mrs. P. charged
old Pot. to be satisfied with anything.

“There are some people, my darling Caroline,” she said to me, “with
whom it does not do to quarrel. It isn’t christian to quarrel. I
can’t afford to be on bad terms with the De Familles.”

“It is odd, isn’t it,” said Kurz Pacha to Mrs. P., as we were sailing
down the harbor on our way to Europe, and talking of the circumstance
of the state-rooms, “it is so odd, that in Sennaar, where to be sure,
civilization has scarcely a foothold--I mean such civilization as you
enjoy--this proceeding would have been called dishonest! They do have
the oddest use of terms in Sennaar! Why, I remember that I once bought
a sheep, and as it was coming to my fold in charge of my shepherd, a
man in a mask came out of a wood and walked away with the sheep, and
appropriated the mutton-chops to his own family uses. And those
singular people in Sennaar called it stealing. Shall I ever get
through laughing at them when I return! There ought to be missionaries
sent to Sennaar. Do you think the Rev. Cream Cheese would go? How
gracefully he would say: ‘Benighted brethren, in my country when a man
buys a sheep or a state-room, and pays money for it, and another man
appropriates it, depriving the rightful buyer of his chops and sheep,
what does the buyer do? Does he swear? Does he rail? Does he complain?
Does he even ask for the cold pickings? Not at all, brethren; he does
none of these things. He sends Worcestershire sauce to the thief, or a
pillow of poppies, and says to him, Friend, all of mine is thine, and
all of thine is thine own. This, benighted people of Sennaar, is the
practice of a Christian people. As one of our great poets says, ‘It
is more blessed to give than to receive.’ Think how delicately the
Rev. Cream would pat his mouth with the fine cambric handkerchief,
after rounding off such a homily! He might ask you and Mrs. Potiphar
to accompany him as examples of this Christian pitch of
self-sacrifice. On the whole, I wouldn’t advise you to go. The rude
races of Sennaar, might put that beautiful forgiveness of yours to
extraordinary proofs. Holloa! there’s a sea!”

We were dismally sea-sick. And I cared for nothing but arriving. Oh!
dear, I think I would even have given up Paris, at least I thought so.
But, oh! how _could_ I think so! Just fancy a place where not
only your own maid speaks French, but where everybody, the porters,
the coachmen, the chambermaids, can’t speak anything else! Where the
very beggars beg, and the commonest people swear, in French! Oh! it’s
inexpressibly delightful. Why, the dogs understand it, and the
horses--“everybody,” as Kurz Pacha said to me, the morning after our
arrival (for he insisted upon coming, “it was such a freak,” he said,)
“everybody rolls in a luxury of French, and, according to the
boarding-school standard, is happy.”

Everybody--but poor Mr. Potiphar!

He has a terrible time of it.

When we arrived we alighted at Meurice’s,--all the fashionable people
do; at least Gauche Boosey said Lord Brougham did, for he used to read
it in Galignani and I suppose it is fashionable to do as Lord Brougham
does. D’Orsay Firkin said that the Hotel Bristol was more
_récherché_.

“Does that mean cheaper?” inquired Mr. Potiphar.

Mr. Firkin looked at him compassionately.

“I only want,” said Mr. Potiphar, in a kind of gasping way, for it was
in the cars on the way from Boulogne to Paris that we held this
consultation--“I only want to go where there is somebody who can speak
English.”

“My dear sir, there are Commissionaires at all the hotels who are
perfect linguists,” said Mr. Firkin in a gentlemanly manner.

“Oh! dear me!” said Mr. P. wiping his forehead with the red bandanna
that he always carries, despite Mrs. P., “what is a commissionaire?”

“An interpreter, a cicerone,” said Mr. Firkin.

“A guide, philosopher, and friend,” said Kurz Pacha.

“Kurz Pacha, do you speak French?” inquired Mr. P. nervously, as we
rolled along.

“Oh! yes,” replied he.

“Oh! dear me!” said Mr. Potiphar, looking disconsolately out of the
window.

We arrived soon after.

“We are now at the _Barrière_” said Mr. Firkin.

“What do we do there?” asked Mr. Potiphar.

“We are inspected,” said Mr. Firkin.

Mr. Potiphar drew himself up with a military air.

We alighted and walked into the room where all the baggage was
arranged.

“_Est-ce qu’il y a quelque chose à déclarer?_” asked an officer,
addressing Mr. Potiphar.

“Good heavens! what did you say?” said Mr. P., looking at him.

The officer smiled, and Kurz Pacha said something, upon which he bowed
and passed on. We stepped outside upon the pavement, and I confess
that even I could not understand everything that was said by the crowd
and the coachmen. But Kurz Pacha led the way to a carriage, and we
drove off to Meurice’s.

“It’s awful, isn’t it?” said Mr. Potiphar, panting.

When we reached the hotel, a gentleman (Mr. Potiphar said he was sure
he was a gentleman, from a remark he made--in English) came bowing
out. But before the door of the carriage was opened, Mr. P. thrust
his head out of the window, and holding the door shut, cried out, “Do
you speak English here?”

“Certainly, sir,” replied the clerk; and that was the remark that so
pleased Mr. Potiphar.

My room was next to the Potiphars, and I heard a great deal, you may
be sure. I didn’t mean to, but I couldn’t help it. The next morning,
when they were about coming down, I heard Polly say--

“Now, Mr. Potiphar, remember, if you want to speak of your room it is
_numero quatre-vingt cinq_” and she pronounced it very slowly. “Now
try, Mr. P.”

“Oh! dear me. Kattery vang sank,” said he.

“Very good,” answered she; “_au troisième_; that means, on the
third floor. Now try.”

“O tror--Otrorsy--O trorsy--Oh! dear me!” muttered he in a tone of
despair.

“_ème_,” said Mrs. P.

“Aim,” said he.

“Well?” said Mrs. P.

“O trorsyaim,” said he.

“That’s very well, indeed!” said Mrs. Potiphar, and they went out of
the room. I joined them in the hall, and we ran on before Mr. P., but
we soon heard some one speaking, and stopped.

“_Monsieur, veut il prendre un commissionaire?_”

“Kattery--vang--sank,” replied Mr. Potiphar, with great emphasis.

“_Comment?_” said the other.

“O tror--O tror--Oh! Polly--seeaim--seeaim!” returned Mr. P.

“You speak English,” said the commissionaire.

“Why! good God! do _you?_” asked Mr. P., with astonishment.

“I speaks every languages, sare,” replied the other, “and we will use
the English, if you please. But Monsieur speaks _très bien_ the
French language.”

“Are you speaking English now?” asked Mr. Potiphar.

The commissionaire answered him that he was,--and Mr. P. thrust his
arm through that of the commissionaire and said--

“My dear sir, if you are disengaged I should be very glad if you would
accompany me in my walks through the town.”

“Mr. Potiphar!” said Polly, “come!”

“Coming, my dear,” answered he, as he approached with the
commissionaire. It was in vain that Mrs. P. winked and frowned. Her
husband would not take hints. So taking his other arm, and wishing the
commissionaire good morning, she tried to draw him away. But he clung
to his companion and said,

“Polly, this gentleman speaks English.”

“Don’t keep his arm,” whispered she; “he is only a servant.”

“Servant, indeed!” said he; “you should have heard him speak French,
and you see how gentlemanly he is.”

It was some time before Polly was able to make her husband comprehend
the case.

“Ah!” said he, at length; “Oh! I understand.”

All our first days were full of such little mistakes. Kurz Pacha come
regularly to see us, and laughed more than I ever saw him laugh
before. The young men were away a great deal, which was hardly kind.
But they said they must call upon their old acquaintances; and Polly
and I expected every day to be called upon by their lady friends.

“It’s very odd that the friends of these young men don’t call upon
us,” said Mrs. Potiphar to Kurz Pacha; “it would be only civil.”

The Ambassador laughed a good deal to himself and then answered,

“But they are not visiting ladies.”

“What do you mean,” said she.

“Ask Mr. Firkin,” replied he.

So when we saw them next, Mrs P. said,

“Mr. Firkin, I remember you used to tell me of the pleasant circles in
which you visited in Paris, and how much superior French society is to
American.”

“Infinitely superior,” replied Mr. Firkin.

“Much more _spirituel_,” said Mr. Boosey.

“Well,” said Mrs. Potiphar, “we are going to stay only a short time to
be sure, but we should like very much to see a little good society.”

“Ah!” said Mr. Firkin.

“Oh! yes, certainly,” said Mr. Boosey; and the corners of his eyelids
twitched.

“Perhaps you might suggest that you have some friends staying in
town,” said Mrs. P. “You know we’re all intimate enough for that.”

“Yes--oh yes,” said Mr. Firkin, slowly; “but the truth is, it’s a
little awkward. These ladies are kind enough to receive us; but to ask
favors of them, is, you see, different.”

“Oh! yes,” interrupted Mr. Boosey; “to ask favors of them is a very
different thing,” and his eyes really glistened.

“These are ladies, you see, dear Mrs. Potiphar,” said Kurz Pacha, “who
don’t grant favors.”

“But still,” continued Mr. Firkin, “if you only wanted to see them,
you know, and be able to say at home that you knew Madame la Marquise
So-and-so, and Madame la Comtesse So-and-so, and describe their
dresses, why, we can manage it well enough; for we are engaged to a
little party at the opera this evening with the Countess de Papillon
and Madame Casta Diva, two of the best known ladies in Paris. But they
never visit.”

“How superbly exclusive!” said Mrs. Potiphar; “I wonder how that would
do at home! However, I should be glad to see the general air and the
toilette, you know. If we were going to pass the whole winter I would
know them of course. But things are different where you stay so short
a time. Eh, Kurz Pacha?”

“Very different, Madame. But you are quite right. Make hay while the
sun shines; use your eyes if you can’t use your tongue. Eyes are great
auxiliaries, you can use the tongue afterward. You’ve no idea how
well you can talk about French society if you only go to the opera
with a friend who knows people, and to your banker’s soirées. If you
chose to read a little of Balzac, beside, your knowledge will be
complete.”

So we agreed to go to the opera. We passed the days shopping, and
driving in the _Bois de Boulogne_. Sometimes the young men went
with us, and D’Orsay Firkin confided to me one of his adventures,
which was very romantic. You know how handsome he is, and how
excessively gentlemanly, and how the girls were all in love with him
last winter at home. Now you needn’t say that I was, for you know
better. I liked him as a friend. But he told me that he had often
seen a girl in one of the shops on the Boulevards watching him very
closely. He never passed by, but she always saw him, and looked so
earnestly at him, that at length he thought he would saunter
carelessly into the shop, and ask for some trifle. The moment he
entered she fixed her eyes full upon him, and he says they were large
and lustrous, and a little mournful in expression. But he scarcely
looked at her, and asked at the opposite counter for a pair of
gloves. He tried them on, and in the mirror behind the counter he saw
the girl still watching him. After lingering for some time, and
looking at everything but the girl, he sauntered slowly out again
while her eyes, he said, grew evidently more mournful as she saw him
leave without looking at her. Daily, for a week afterwards, he walked
by the door, and she was always watching and looking after him with
the most eager interest. Mr. Firkin did not say he was sorry for the
little French girl, but I know that he really felt so. These men, that
every woman falls in love with, are generous, I have always found. And
I am sure he would never have confided this little affair to me,
except for the very intimate terms upon which we are; for I have heard
him say (speaking of other men) that nothing was meaner than for a man
to tell of his conquests.

Well, the affair went on, he says, for some days longer. He was, at
the time, constantly in attendance upon the Countess de Papillon, but
often from the window of her carriage he has remarked the young girl
pensively watching him, as she stretched gloves, or tied cravats
around the necks of customers. At length he determined to follow the
matter up, as he called it, and so marched into the shop one day, and
going straight toward the mournful eyes, he asked for a pair of
gloves. Mr. Firkin says the French women are so perfectly trained to
conceal their emotions, that she did not betray, by any trembling, or
turning pale, or stammering, the profound interest she felt for him,
but quietly looked in his eyes, and in what Mr. Firkin called “a
strain of Siren sweetness,” asked what number he wore. He replied
with his French _esprit_, as Kurz Pacha calls it, that he thought
the size of her hand was about right for him; upon which she smiled in
the most bewitching manner, and bringing out a large box of gloves,
selected a pair of an exquisite _nuance_, as the French say, you
know, and asking him to put out his hand, she proceeded to fit the
glove to it, herself. Mr. Firkin remarked, that as she did so, she
would raise her eyes to his whenever she found it necessary to press
his fingers harder than usual, and when he thought the glove was
fairly on, she kept pulling it down, and smoothing it; and finally
taking his hand between both of hers, she brought the glove together,
buttoned it, and said, “Monsieur has such a delicate hand,” and smiled
sweetly. Mr. Firkin said he bought an astonishing number of gloves
that morning, and suddenly remembered that he wanted cravats.
Fortunately the new styles had just come in, Marie said (for he had
discovered her name), and she opened a dazzling array of silks and
satins, and asking him to remove his neckcloth, she wound her hand
in a beautiful silk, and throwing her arms, for a little moment, quite
around his neck, she tied it in front; her little hands sometimes
hitting his chin. Then taking him by the hand she led him to a mirror,
in which he might survey the effect, while she stood behind him
looking into the mirror over his shoulder, her head really quite close
to his, and, in her enthusiasm about the set of the cravat, having
forgotten to take her hand out of his. He stood a great while before
that mirror, trying to discover if it really was a becoming tie. He
said he never found so much difficulty in deciding. But Marie decided
everything for him, and laid aside piles of cravats, and gloves, and
fancy buttons, and charms, until he was quite dizzy, and found that he
hadn’t money enough in his pocket to pay.

“It is nothing,” said the trustful Marie, “Monsieur will call again.”
 Touched by her confidence he has called several times since, and never
escapes without paying fifty francs or so. Marie says the _Messieurs
Americains_ are princes. They never have smaller change than a
Napoleon, and they are not only the most regal of customers but the
most polite of gentlemen. Mr. Firkin says he has often seen Frenchmen
watching him, as he stood in the shop, with the most quizzical
expression, and once or twice he has thought he heard suppressed
laughter from a group of the other girls and the French gentlemen.
But it was a mistake, for when he turned, the Frenchmen had the
politest expression, and the girls were very busy with the goods. Poor
French gentlemen! how they must be annoyed to see foreigners carrying
off not only all the gloves, but all the smiles, of the beautiful
Maries. It is really pleasant to see Gauche Boosey and D’Orsay Firkin
promenade on the Boulevards. They are more superbly dressed than
anybody else. They have such coats, and trowsers, and waistcoats, and
boots,--“always looking,” says Kurz Pacha, “as if they came into a
large fortune last evening, and were anxious to advertise the fact
this morning.” Even the boys in the streets turn to look at them.

Mr. Boosey always buys the pattern shirts, and woollen morning
dresses, and fancy coats, that hang in the shop windows. “Then,” he
says, “I am sure of being at the height of the fashion.” Mr. Firkin
is more quiet. The true gentleman, he says, is known by the absence of
everything _prononcé_. “He is a very true gentleman, then,” even
Kurz Pacha says, “for I have never found anything _prononcé_ in
Mr. D’Orsay Firkin.” The Pacha tells a good story of them. “The week
after their arrival Mr. B. appeared in a suit of great splendor. It
was a very remarkable coat, and waistcoat, covered with gilt sprigs,
and an embroidered shirt-bosom, altogether a fine coronation suit for
the king of the Cannibal Islands. Mr. Firkin, as usual, was rigorously
gentlemanly, in the quiet way. They walked together up the Boulevards,
Mr. B. flashing in the sun, and Mr. F. sombre as a shadow. The whole
world turned to remark the extreme gorgeousness of Mr. Boosey’s
attire, which was peculiar even in Paris. At first that ornament of
society rather enjoyed it, but such universal attention became a
little wearisome, and at length annoying. Finally Mr. Boosey could
endure it no longer, and turning round he stopped Mr. Firkin and
looking at him from top to toe, remarked, ‘Really I see nothing so
peculiar in your dress that the whole town should stop to stare at
you’ Mr. Boosey is a man of great discrimination,” concluded the
Ambassador.

He went with us to the opera, where we were to see the Countess de
Papillon and Madame Casta Diva. The house was full, and the young
gentlemen had told us where to look for their box. Mrs. Potiphar had
made Mr. P. as presentable as possible, and begged the Sennaar
Minister to see that Mr. P. did not talk too loud, nor go to sleep,
nor offend the proprieties in any way; especially to cut off all his
attempts at speaking French. She had hired the most expensive box.

“People respect money, my dear,” said Mrs. Potiphar to me.

“But not always its owners, my dear,” whispered Kurz Pacha in my other
ear.

When we entered the box all the glasses in the house were levelled at
us. Mrs. Potiphar gayly seated herself in the best seat, nodding and
chatting with the Ambassador; her diamonds glittering, her brocade
glistening, her fan waving, while I slipped into the seat opposite,
and Mr. Potiphar stood behind me in a dazzling expanse of white
waistcoat, and his glass in his eye, as Mrs. P. had taught him.

“A very successful entree” whispered the Pacha to Mrs. P. “I shall
give out to my friends that it is the heiress presumptive of the
Comanchees.”

“No, really; what is the Comanchees?” said Polly levelling her glass
all round the house, and laughing, and talking, and rustling, as if
she were very, very happy.

Suddenly there was a fresh volley of glasses towards our box, and, to
our perfect dismay, we turned and saw that Mr. Potiphar had advanced
to the front, and having put down his eye-glass, had taken out his
old, round, silver-barred spectacles, and was deliberately wiping them
with that great sheet of a hideous red bandanna, “prepartory to an
exhaustive survey of the house,” whispered Kurz Pacha to me.

Mrs. P. wouldn’t betray any emotion, but still smiling, she hissed to
him, under her breath:

“Mr. P., get back this minute. Don’t make a fool of yourself. _Mais,
monsieur, c’est vraiment charmant._”

The latter sentence was addressed with smiles to the Ambassador, as
she saw that the neighbor in the next box was listening.

“It’s uncommonly warm,” said Mr. Potiphar in a loud tone, as he wiped
his forehead with the bandanna.

“Yes, I observe that Mrs. Potiphar betrays the heat in her face,” said
the Pacha, “which however, is merely a becoming carnation, Madame,”
 concluded he, sinking his voice, and rubbing his hands.

At that moment in the box opposite, I saw our friends, Mr. Boosey and
Mr. Firkin. By their sides sat two such handsome women! They wore a
great quantity of jewelry, and had the easiest, most smiling faces you
ever saw. They entered making a great noise, and I could see that the
modesty of our friends kept them in the rear. For they seemed almost
afraid of being seen.

“I like that,” said Kurz Pacha; “it shows that such stern republicans
don’t intend ever to appear delighted with the smiles of nobility.”

“The largest one is Madame la Marquise Casta Diva,” said
Mrs. Potiphar, scanning them carefully, “I know her by her patrician
air. What a splendid thing blood is, to be sure!”

She gave herself several minutes to study the toilette of the lady,
while I looked at the younger lady, Countess de Papillon, who had all
kinds of little fluttering ends of ribbons, and laces, and scallops,
and ruffles, and was altogether so stylish!

“I see now where Mr. Firkin gets his elegant manners,” said
Mrs. Potiphar; “it is a great privilege for young Americans to be
admitted familiarly into such society. I now understand better the
tone of their conversation when they refer to the French Salons.”

“Yes, my dear Madame,” answered the Pacha, “this is indeed making the
best of one’s opportunities. This is well worth coming to Europe for.
It is, in fact, for this that Europe is chiefly valuable to an
American, as the experience of an observer shows. Paris is,
notoriously, the great centre of historical and romantic interest. To
be sure, Italy, Rome, Switzerland, and Germany,--yes, and even
England,--have some few objects of interest and attention. But the
really great things of Europe, the superior interests, are all in
Paris. Why, just reflect. Here is the _Café de Paris_, the
_Trois Frères_, and the _Maison Dorée_. I don’t think you
can get such dinners elsewhere. Then, there is the Grand Opera, the
Comic Opera, and now and then the Italian--I rather think that is good
music. Are there any such theatres as the _Vaudeville,_ the
_Varietés,_ and the _Montansier,_ where there is the most
dexterous balancing on the edge of decency that ever you saw; and when
the balance is lost, as it always is, at least a dozen times every
evening, the applause is tremendous, showing that the audience have
such a subtile sense of propriety that they can detect the slightest
deviation from the right line. Is there not the _Louvre_, where,
if there is not the best picture of a single great artist, there are
good specimens of all? Will you please to show me such a promenade as
the Boulevards, such fetês as those of the _Champ Elysées_, such
shops as those of the _Passages_, and the _Palais Royal_. Above all,
will you indicate to such students of mankind as Mr. Boosey, Mr.
Firkin, and I, a city more abounding in piquant little women, with
eyes, and coiffures and toilettes, and _je ne sais quoi_, enough
to make Diogenes a dandy, to obtain their favor? I think, dear
Madame, you would be troubled to do it. And while these things are
Paris, while we are sure of an illimitable allowance of all this in
the gay capital, we do right to remain here. Let who will, sadden
in mouldy old Rome, or luxuriate in the orange-groves of Sorento
and the south, or wander among the ruins of the most marvellous of
empires, and the monuments of art of the highest human genius, or
float about the canals of Venice, or woo the Venus and the Apollo;
and learn from the silent lips of those teachers a lore sweeter
than the French novelists impart;--let who will, climb the tremendous
Alps, and feel the sublimity of Switzerland as he rises from the
summer of Italian lakes and vineyards to the winter of the glaciers,
or makes the tour of all climates in a day by descending those
mountains towards the south;--let those who care for it, explore in
Germany the sources of modern history, and the remote beginnings of
the American spirit;--ours be the Boulevards, the demoiselles, the
operas, and the unequalled dinners. Decency requires that we should
see Rome, and climb an Alps. We will devote a summer week to the one,
and a winter month to the other. They will restore us renewed and
refreshed for the manly, generous, noble, and useful life we lead in
Paris.”

“Admirably said,” returned Mrs. Potiphar, who had been studying the
ladies opposite while the Pacha was speaking, “but a little bit
prosy,” she whispered to me.

It would charm you to hear how intelligently Mrs. P. speaks about
French society, since that evening at the opera. When we return, you
will find how accomplished she is. We have been here only a few weeks,
and we already know all the fashionable shops, and a little more
French, and we go to the confectioners, and eat _savarins_ every
morning at 12, and we drive in the _Bois de Boulogne_ in the
afternoon, and we dine splendidly, and in the evening we go to the
opera or a theatre. To be sure, we don’t have much society beside our
own party. But then the shop-girls point out the distinguished women
to Mrs. Potiphar, so that she can point them out when we drive; and
our banker calls and keeps us up in gossip; and Mrs. Potiphar’s maid,
Adèle, is inestimable in furnishing information; and Mr. Potiphar
gets a great deal out of his commissionaire, and goes about studying
his Galignani’s Guide, and frequents the English Heading Room, where I
am told, he makes himself a little conspicuous when he finds that
Englishmen won’t talk, by saying, “Oh! dear me!” and wiping his face
with a bandanna. He usually opens his advances by making sure of an
Englishman, and saying, “_Bon matin,_--but, perhaps, sir, you
don’t speak French.”

“You evidently do not, sir,” replied one gentleman.

“No, sir; you’re right there,” answered Mr. P. But he couldn’t get
another word from his companion.

In this delightful round the weeks glide by.

“You must be enjoying yourself immensely,” says the Pacha. “You
understand life, my dear Mrs. Potiphar. Here you are, speaking very
little French, in a city where the language is an atmosphere, and
where you are in no sense acclimated until you can speak it
fluently--with all French life shut out from you--living in a
hotel--cheated by butcher, baker, and candlestick-maker--going to hear
plays that you imperfectly understand--to an opera where you know
nobody, and where your box is filled with your own countrymen, who are
delightful, indeed, but whom you didn’t come to Paris to
see--constantly buying a hundred things because they are pretty, and
because you are in Paris--entirely ignorant, and quite as careless, of
the historical interests of the city, of the pictures, of the statues,
and buildings--surrounded by celebrities of all kinds, of whom you
never heard, and therefore lose the opportunity of seeing them--in
fact, paying the most extravagant price for everything, and purchasing
only the consciousness of being in Paris--why, you ought to be happy,
and considered to be having a fine time of it, if you are not? How
naturally you will sigh for all this when you return and recur to
Paris as the culmination of human bliss! Here’s my honored Potiphar,
who has this morning been taken to a darkened room in a grand old
house, in a lonely, aristocratic street; and there a picture-agent has
shown him a splendid Nicolas Poussin, painted in his prime for the
family, whose heir in reduced circumstances must now part with it at a
tearful sacrifice. Honored P.’s friend, the commissionaire, interprets
this story, while the agent stands sadly meditating the sacrifice with
which his duty acquaints him. He informs the good P., through the
friendly commissionaire, that he has been induced to offer him the
picture, not only because all Americans have so fine a taste (as his
experience has proved to him) in paintings, nor because they are so
much more truly munificent than the nobility of other nations, but
because the heir in reduced circumstances wishes to think of the
picture as entirely removed from the possibility of being seen in
France. Family pride, which is almost crushed in disposing of so great
and valued a work, would be entirely quenched, if the sale were to be
known, and the picture recognized elsewhere in the country. Monsieur
is a gentleman, and he will understand the feelings of a gentleman
under such circumstances. The commissionaire and the picture-agent
therefore preserve a profound silence, and my honored friend feels for
his red bandanna, and is not comfortable in the lonely old house,
with the picture and the people. The agent says that it is not unusual
for the owner to visit the picture about that very hour, to hear what
chance there is for its sale. If this knock should be he, it would not
be very remarkable. The heir enters. He has a very heavy moustache,
dark hair, and a slightly Hebrew cast of countenance.

“Mr. Potiphar is introduced. The heir contemplates the picture sadly,
and he and the agent point out its beauties to each other. In fine, my
honored Potiphar buys the work of art. To any one else, of course, in
France, for instance, the price should be eleven thousand francs. But
the French and the Americans have fraternized; a thousand francs shall
be deducted.

“You see clearly it’s quite worth while coming to Paris to do this,
because I suppose, there are not more than ten or twenty artists at
home who could paint ten or twenty times as good a picture for a
quarter of the price. But you, dearest Mrs. P., who know all about
pictures, naturally don’t want American pictures in your house, any
more than you want anything else American there.

“My young friends and allies, Messrs. Boosey, Firkin, and Croesus, say
that they come to Paris to see the world. They get the words wrong,
you know. They come that the world (that is, _their_ world at
home) may not see them. To accompany Mesdames de Papillon and Casta
Diva to the opera, then to return to beautifully furnished apartments
to sup, and to prolong the entertainment until morning, is what those
charming youths mean when they say ‘see the world.’ To attend at that
_réunion_ of the _Haut Ton_, Monsieur Celarius’ dancing
academy, is to see good society in Paris, after the manner of those
dashing men of the world. It’s amusing enough, and it’s innocent
enough in its way. They won’t go very far. They’ll spend a good deal
of money for nothing. They’ll be plucked at gaming-houses. They’ll be
quietly laughed at by Mesdames de Papillon and Casta Diva, and the
male friends of those ladies who enjoy the benefit of the lavish
bounty of our young Croesus and Firkins. They’ll swagger a good deal,
and take airs, and come home and indulge in foreign habits now grown
indispensable. They will pronounce upon the female toilette, and upon
the _gantier le plus comme il faut_, in Paris. They will beg your
pardon for expressing a little phrase in French--to which, really the
English is inadequate. They will have, necessarily, the foreign
air. Some of them will settle away into business men, and be very
exemplary. Others will return to Paris, as moths to the light,
asserting that the only place for a gentleman to live agreeably, to
indulge his tastes, and get the most for his money, is Paris--which is
strictly true of such gentlemen as they. A view of life that starts
from the dinner-table, inevitably selects Paris for its career. For,
obviously, if you live to dine well you must live where there is good
cooking.

“You women are rather worse off than the young men, Mrs. P.; because
you are necessarily so much more confined to the house. Unless,
indeed, you imitate Mrs. Vite, who goes wherever the gentlemen go, and
who is famous as _L’Américaine_. If you like that sort of thing,
you can do as much of it as you please. It will always surround you
with a certain kind of man,--and withdraw from your society a certain
kind of woman, and a certain kind of respect.”

{Illustration}

“To conclude my sermon, ladies, Europe is a charmed name to Americans,
because in Europe are the fountains of all our education and training.
History is the story of that hemisphere; the ruins of empires, arts,
and civilizations, are here. Now, if there is any use in living at
all, which I am far from asserting, is it worth while to get nothing
out of Europe but a prolonged supper with Madame Casta Diva, or a
wardrobe of all the charming dresses in Paris, and a facility of
scandal which has all the wickedness and none of the wit of the finest
French-woman? I beg a thousand pardons for preaching, but the text was
altogether too pregnant.”

And so Kurz Pacha whirled out of the room, humming a waltz of
Strauss. He has heard of his recall to Sennaar since he has been
here--and we shall hear nothing more of him. We, too, leave Paris in a
few days for home, and you will not hear from us again. Mrs. Potiphar
has been as busy as possible getting up the greatest variety of
dresses. You will see that she has not been to Paris for nothing. Kurz
Pacha asked us if we had been to the Louvre, where the great pictures
are. But when I inquired if there were any of Mr. Düsseldorf’s there,
and he said no, why, of course, as he is my favorite, and I know more
of his works than I do of any others, I didn’t go. There are some very
pretty things there, Mr. Boosey says. But ladies have no time for
such matters. Do you know, the other evening we went to the ball at
the Tuileries, and oh! it was splendid. There were one duke and three
marquesses, and a great many counts, presented to me. They all said,
“It’s charming, this evening,” and I said, “very charming, indeed.”
 Wasn’t it nice?

But you should have seen Mrs. Potiphar when the Emperor Napoleon
III. spoke to her. You know what a great man he is, and what a
benefactor to his country, and how pure, and noble, and upright his
private character and career have been; and how, as Kurz Pacha said,
he is radiant with royalty, and honors everybody to whom he
speaks. Well, Mrs. P. was presented, and sank almost to the ground in
her reverence. But she actually trembled with delight when the Emperor
said:

“Madame, I remember with the greatest pleasure the beautiful city of
New York.”

I am sure the Emgress Eugenie would have been jealous, could she have
heard the tone in which it was said. Wasn’t it affable in such a great
monarch towards a mere republican? I wonder how people can slander him
so, and tell such stories about him. I never saw a nicer man; only he
looks sleepy. I suppose the cares of state oppress him, poor man! But
one thing you may be sure of, dear Mrs. Downe, if people at home laugh
at the Emperor and condemn him, just find out _if they have ever
been invited to the Tuileries_. If not, you will understand the
reason of their hatred. Mrs. Potiphar says to the Americans here that
she can’t hear the Emperor spoken against, for they are on the best of
terms.

“Of course the French dislike him” says Mr. Firkin, who has a turn
for politics, “for they want a republic before they are ready for it.”

How you would enjoy all this, dear, and how sorry I am you are not
here. I think Mr. Potiphar is rather disconsolate. He whistles and
looks out of the window down into the garden of the Tuileries, where
the children play under the trees; and as he looks he stops whistling,
and gazes sometimes for half an hour; and whenever he goes out
afterward, he is sure to buy something for Freddy. When the shopkeeper
asks where it shall be sent, Mr. P. says, in a loud, slow
voice--“Hotel Mureece, Kattery-vang-sank-o-trorsyaim.”

It is astonishing, as Kurz Pacha said that we are not more respected
abroad. “Foreigners will never know what you really are,” said he to
Mr. P., “until they come to you. Your going to them has failed.”

Good bye, dearest Mrs. Downe. We are so sorry to come home! You won’t
hear from us again.

Your ever affectionate

CAROLINE




VI. -- KURZ PACHA TO THE KING OF SENNAAR,

UPON RECEIVING HIS LETTERS OF RECALL.

(NOW FIRST TRANSLATED.)


MOST SABLE AND SERENE MASTER:

I hear and obey. You said to me, Go, and I went. You now say, come,
and I am coming, with the readiness that befits a slave, and the
cheerfulness that marks the philosopher.

Accustomed from my youth to breathe the scented air of Sennaar
saloons, and to lounge in listless idleness with young Sennaar, I am
weary of the simple purity of manners that distinguishes this people,
and long for the pleasing, if pointless frivolities of your court.

Coming, as you commanded, to observe and report the social state of
the metropolis of a people who, in the presence of the world, have
renounced the feudal organization of society, I have found them, as
you anticipated, totally free from the petty ambitions, the bitter
resolves, and the hollow pretences, that characterize the society of
older states.

The people of the first fashion unite the greatest simplicity of
character with the utmost variety of intelligence, and the most
graceful elegance of manner. Knowing that for an American the only
nobility is that of feeling; the only grace, generosity; and the only
elegance, simplicity; they have achieved a society which is a blithe
Arcadia, illustrating to the world the principles they profess, and
making the friend of man rejoice.

We, who are reputed savages, might well be astonished and fascinated
with the results of civilization, as they are here displayed. The
universal courtesy and consideration--the gentle charity, which does
not consider the appearance but the substance--the republican
independence, which teaches foreign lords and ladies the worthlessness
of mere rank, by obviously respecting the character and not the
title--the eagerness with which foreign habits are subdued, by the
positive nature of American manners--the readiness to assist--the
total want of coarse social emulation--the absence of ignorance,
prejudice and vulgarity, in the selecter circles--the broad, sweet,
catholic welcome to all that is essentially national and
characteristic, which sends the young American abroad only that he may
return eschewing European habits, and with a confidence in man and his
country, chastened by experience--these have most interested and
charmed me in the observation of this pleasing people.

It is here the pride of every man to bear his part in the universal
labor. The young men, instead of sighing for other institutions, and
the immunities of rank, prefer to deserve, by earning, their own
patents of Nobility. They are industrious, temperate, and frugal, as
becomes the youth to whom the destinies of so great a nation, and the
hopes of the world, are committed. They are proud to have raised
themselves from poverty, and they are never ashamed to confess that
they are poor. They acknowledge the equal dignity of all kinds of
labor, and do not presume upon any social differences between their
baker and themselves. Knowing that luxury enervates a nation, they aim
to show in their lives, as in their persons, that simplicity is the
finest ornament of dress, as health best decorates the body. They are
cheerfully obedient to those who command them, and gentle to those
they command. Full of charity, and knowing that if every man has some
sore weakness, he has also a human soul latent in him, they trust each
man as if that soul might, at any moment, look out of his eyes, and
acknowledge with tears, the sympathy that unites them.

They show in all this social independence and originality, the shrewd
common-sense which we have so often heard ascribed to them. For if, by
some fatal error, they should undertake a social rivalry, in kind,
with the old world and all its splendid accessories of antiquity,
wealth and hereditary refinement, the observer would see, what now is
never beheld, foolish parvenus frenzied in the pursuit of an elegance
which, in its nature, is inaccessible to them. We should see lavish
and unmeaning displays. We should see a gaudy ostentation,--serving
only as a magnificent frame to the vanity of the subject. We should
see the grave and thoughtful, the witty and accomplished, the men and
women whose genius fitted them for society, withdrawing from its
saloons, and preferring privacy to a vulgar and profuse publicity. We
should see society become a dancing school, and men and women
degenerated into dull and dandified boys and girls, content with
(pardon me, sable sir, but it would be the truth) “style.” We should
see, as if in an effete civilization, marriages of convenience. We
should hear the heirs, or the holders, of great fortunes, called
“gentlemanly,” if they were dull, and “a little wild” if they were
debauched. We should see parents panting to “marry off” their dear
daughters to the richest youths, and the richest youths affecting a
“jolly” and “stunning” life,--reputed to know the world because they
are licentious, and to have seen life because they have tasted foreign
dissipation. We should hear insipidity praised as good-humor, and
nonchalance as ease. We should have boorishness accounted manliness,
and impudence wit. We should gradually lose faith in man as we
associated with men, and soon perceive that the only safety for the
city was in its constant recruiting from the simplicity and strength
of the country.

The sharp common-sense of this people prevents so melancholy a
spectacle. In fact, you have only to consider that this society does
not remind you of the best characteristics of any other, to judge how
unique it is.

But, for myself, as milk disagrees with my constitution, and my mind
tires of this pastoral sweetness, I am too glad to obey your
summons. In my younger days when I loved to press the stops of oaten
pipes, and--a plaintive swain--fancied every woman what she seemed,
and every man my friend,--I should have hailed the prospect of a life
in an Arcadia like this. How gladly I should have climbed its
Pisgah-peaks of hope, and have looked off into the Future, flowing
with milk and honey. I would grieve (if I could) that my sated
appetite refuses more,--that I must lay down my crook and play the
shepherd no longer. Yet I know well enough that in the perfumed
atmosphere of the circle to which I return, I shall recur often, with
more than regret, to the humane, polished, intelligent, and simple
society I leave behind me,--shall wonder if Miss Minerva Tattle still
prattles kindly among the birds and flowers,--if Mrs. Potiphar still
leads, by her innate nobility, and not by the accident of wealth, the
swarm of gay, and graceful, and brilliant men and women that surround
her.

I humbly trust, sable son of midnight, my lord and master, that my
present report and summary will be found worthy of that implicit
confidence immemorially accorded to diplomatic communications. I
could ask for it no other reception.

Your slave,

KURZ PACHA.




VII. -- FROM THE REV. HENRY DOVE TO MRS. POTIPHAR.

(PRIVATE.)


EDENSIDE.

MY DEAR MRS. POTIPHAR:

I am very anxious that you should allow me to receive your son
Frederic as a pupil, at my parsonage, here in the country. I have not
lived in the city without knowing something about it, despite my
cloth, and I am concerned at the peril to which every young man is
there exposed. There is a proud philosophy in vogue that everything
that _can_ be injured had better be destroyed as rapidly as
possible, and put out of the way at once. But I recall a deeper and
tenderer wisdom which declared, “A bruised reed will he not break.”
 The world is not made for the prosperous alone, nor for the strong.
We may wince at the truth, but we must at length believe it,--that the
poor in spirit, and the poor in will, and the poor in success, are
appointed as pensioners upon our care.

In my house your son will miss the luxuries of his home, but he will,
perhaps, find as cordial a sympathy in his little interests, and as
careful a consultation of his desires and aims. He will have pure air,
a tranquil landscape, a pleasant society; my books, variously
selected, my direction and aid in his studies, and a neighborhood to
town that will place its resources within his reach. A city, it seems
to me, is mainly valuable as a gallery of opportunities. But a man
should not live exclusively in his library, nor among his
pictures. Letters and art may well decorate his life. But if they are
not subsidiary to the man, and his character, then he is a sadder
spectacle than a vain book or a poor picture. The eager whirl of a
city tends either to beget a thirst that can only be sated by strong,
yet dangerous excitement, or to deafen a man’s ear, and harden his
heart, to the really noble attractions around him.

It is well to know men. But men are not learned at the billiard table,
nor in the barroom, nor by meeting them in an endless round of
debauch, nor does a man know the world because he has been to Paris.
It is a sad thing for a young man to seek applause by surpassing his
companions in that which makes them contemptible. The best men of our
own time have little leisure, and the best of other days have
committed their better part to books, wherein we may know and love
them.

There is nothing more admirable than good society, as there is nothing
so fine as a noble man, nor so lovely as a beautiful woman. And to the
perfect enjoyment of such society an ease and grace are necessary,
which are hardly to be acquired, but are rather, like beauty and
talent, the gift of Nature. That ease and grace will certainly run
great risk of disappearing, in the embrace of a fashion unchastened by
common sense; and it is observable that the sensitive _gaucherie_
of a countryman is more agreeable than the pert composure of a
citizen.

I do not deny that your son must lose something, if you accede to my
request, but I assuredly believe that he will gain more than he will
lose. My profession makes me more dogmatic, probably, than is strictly
courteous. But I have observed, in my recent visits to town, that
Courtesy, also, is getting puny and unmanly, and that a counterfeit,
called Compliment, is often mistaken for it. You will smile, probably
at my old-fashioned whims, and regret that I am behind my time. But
really, it strikes me, that the ineffectual imitation of an exploded
social organization is, at least, two centuries behind my time. The
youth who, socially speaking, are termed Young America, represent, in
character and conduct, anything but their own time and their own
country.

I will not deny that the secret of my interest in your son, is an
earlier interest in yourself--a wild dream we dreamed together, so
long ago that it seems not to be a part of my life. The companion of
those other days I do not recognize in the glittering lady I sometimes
see. But in her child I trace the likeness of the girl I knew, and it
is to the memory of that girl--whose lovely traits I will still
believe are not destroyed, but are somewhere latent in the woman--that
I consecrate the task I wish to undertake. I am married, and I am
happy. But sometimes through the sweet tranquillity of my life streams
the pensive splendor of that long-vanished summer, and I cannot deny
the heart that will dream of what might have been.

Madame, I can wish you nothing more sincerely than that as your lot is
with the rich in this world, it may be with the poor in the world to
come.

Your obedient servant,

HENRY DOVE.








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