Ann S. Stephens

“ In fact, the skim milk of society was compelled to flow in awful narrow channels, while the crême on crême—excuse French once more—rolled smoothly through the city in carriages, with royalty leading the way, a regiment of trainers leading him, and a band of music leading the whole.
I saw the whole glorious procession. From block to block I flitted, like some aspiring bird on the crest of a wave. My heart was full, my eyes fixed on one object—that tall, noble figure, with a blue watered silk scarf across his royal bosom, and a half-moon hat, with dipping points, gracefully lifted from his head. ”

“ The drive up to that race-ground was just too lovely for anything. The horses fairly flew. The wind just shook the white fringe on my parasol, and kept my emblematical feather dancing after my hat. Cousin Dempster drove, and that girl Cecilia sat high up on the front seat by him, with her short dress ruffled and pinked about the bottom like a full-blown poppy; her—well, ankles visible to the knees, and all her hair floating out loose and crinkly. I say nothing, but ask you, as females of experience, what kind of a woman will that stuck-up child make, in the long run? ”

“ Great chunks of glass like the hub of a wheel, with crooked spokes of glass starting every way from it, and what seemed like hundreds of icicles falling from them, dropped down from the ceiling. When the negro opened the blinds and let in a drift of sunshine, they turned into a snarl of rainbows that fairly blinded me. Then there was a carpet soft as spring grass in a meadow, and bright as a flower-garden; chairs shining with gold and silk; marble women, white as milk, with not a thing on worth speaking of, and looking-glasses half as large as our spring ponds. ”

“ Cousin E. E. had put on a span-new dress, observing, modestly, that a genius could appear in anything, but she hadn't the position which would stand wearing the same dress twice.
"For the sake of New England," says she, "I mean to do my best," which she did, in silk, like a ripe cherry, with wave over wave of black lace over it, and a bunch of white stones on her bosom, burning like a furnace when the light struck them. ”

“ Has female modesty died out since you and I came into the world? or was it burnt over during the war, like the great prairies, where the hot flames parch up all the sweet green grass and the bright flowers, killing them root and blossom, snakes likewise? One thing is certain, my dear sisters in the cause, honesty among men and modesty among women go hand in hand all over the earth. When women degenerate, it is because the moral atmosphere which they breathe is tainted and unwholesome. Something has gone awfully wrong both with the men and women of America in these latter years. ”

“ Goodness gracious, what a female woman that is! No willow tree was ever half so graceful, and, as for manners, the nicest woman I ever saw is nowhere to her. Her dress—well, I really cannot say that it didn't pull an even yoke with mine—at any rate the contrast between us was striking, nothing could have been more so. But I can say, without vanity, the crowd as it came in stopped to look at mine quite as much as it did at hers. Original taste, you know, sisters, is everything; then literary genius united with taste isn't easily matched. Still, Mrs. Sprague's dress was well worth noticing. ”

“ The leaves stir with life on the trees. The brooks murmur and gurgle and laugh by night as they do by day. The birds flutter now and then, and the winds whistle and whisper, filling the night with a stir of life. But here—here in a great city, a ghost-like policeman, or a poor straggling wretch who has no home but the street, is all that you see. Indeed, coming home before daybreak isn't a thing I hanker to do over again.
Well, after pulling at the bell-knob till I'm afraid Cousin Dempster swore internally, we got into the house, and had a good long sleep before breakfast. ”

“ Now, a yacht, sisters, is nothing more or less than a baby schooner, which has two masts, or a sloop, that has one, built up slender and graceful, with a cock-pit, which is in the stern, and a cooking-room, which is in the bow, and all the other fixings which make it as much like a ship as a first-rate baby-house is like an old homestead.
Dempster has been to Washington, and got some contracts or something, and what does he do but come home one hot day when we were all just sweltering in white loose gowns, and says he:
"Girls, what do you say to going down to the Regatta?" ”

“ Every soul—men, women, and children—were looking at those girls, who whirled, and moved, and tangled themselves up in some sort of a wild, wicked dance, that must have been the work of Old Nick himself, for nothing less could have made me look on. My whole heart rose right up against those beautiful creatures, but somehow they seemed to hold me to my seat. Really, sisters, you have no idea how very enticing a woman can be who puffs a lot of gauze around her waist, throws a wreath of flowers over her shoulders, and dances like a whirlwind. ”

“ Wherever he finds genius, this man spends his money like dew upon it. It was he that gave Miss Kellogg her first start in music, and a good many other stragglers have secretly been helped by him when they felt almost like giving up. For my part, I honor and glorify such men.
The next thing I saw was a grand-looking old man, with a long, white beard falling over his bosom, and soft, white hair floating about his head. I held my breath when this man arose, and while the crowd yelled and shouted and made the ground tremble under me, I looked at him with my heart in my eyes. ”

“ SISTERS, I'm afraid you would be taken aback by such dresses as filled Cousin Dempster's parlors that night. Such necks, such arms, no sleeves to speak of, nothing but a skimpy band across the shoulders; heads loaded down with braids and puffs, and great, long curls, which fell on those bare necks and covered them up into a little decency. Then the figures—mercy, how the dresses stood out behind; every lady seemed to be humpbacked below the waist. It takes time to get used to genteel society, I can tell you, and any amount of blushing has to be gone through. ”

“ Well, what Thanksgiving is to New England, Christmas-day is to New York. Everybody goes to meeting in the morning, and everybody takes dinner with everybody else after that. For days before it comes the streets are full of covered wagons, and men and boys, loaded down with bundles, crowd against each other on every doorstep. In fact, half New York just throws itself away in presents on the other half, which pitches just as many back. Thus every street and house is a hubbub of gifts and a blaze of light, from Christmas Eve till after Christmas dinner. ”

“ Hope has perched on my white hat and sits there waving its feather like a pennant.
I am glad from the bottom of my heart that I didn't follow the duke across the ocean. After all a duke is only a man, hard to catch and expensive to cage. Why should we trouble ourselves about princes and dukes and lords, when we have the most genuine of all manly articles right under our feet. Dukes are scarce and hard to scare up, but there are as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it. ”

“ Think of this tree, hung all over with little wax candles, bunches of pale-green and purple grapes, teinty red apples, golden horns and baskets chuck full of sugar things. Stuffed humming-birds, looking chipper as life. Butterflies, that seem to be flying through the green of the trees, and a whole camp-meeting of dolls sitting around the roots, and then tell me if the Christmas time of a New York child isn't like living among the people of a fairy book.
This was the sort of tree set up at Cousin Dempster's, Sunday night before this last Christmas day. ”

“ All these carriages were filled as if they were on the way to a high jubilation, choke full of ladies, with parasols hovering over them like wild birds taking wing, and great clouds of silk, lace gauze, and shiny stuff a-billowing over the sides, till you could but just see the silk cushions they leaned against. Then, again, some were crowded over with gentlemen, mostly in white hats—which delighted me—some with cigars in their mouths—some not—but every one of them just boiling over with good-nature and fun. ”

“ Such a general training of music was enough to wake the dead out of a New England grave, where they sleep sound, I guess, if they do anywhere.
By and by they rose up, and began to wander about, making their funny little white dogs play, and some of the girls began to dance about. It was a travelling-show, you see, and some of the upper-crust people came out of the house I spoke of, and listened. One was a lady, dressed out to kill in a striped skirt, black velvet, and yellow silk; another yellow skirt bunched over that, and then a blue dress puffed above both, and her hair just splendid. ”

“ When I was a little girl, sisters, my heart rose and fell to music like this till I suffered terribly, sometimes, without speaking a word to any one—for these are feelings which one never does talk of—there is no language that I ever learned which will express them. But I have never heard any music that could reach my soul like that which God gives us in the blossom season—the summer, the fall of late fruit—and the bleak, hard winter, when the clash of ice against ice has a sound that no man or woman can reach. ”

“ When the hub turns on its axle, the spokes whirl and the tires revolve, giving a swift throb to the whole universe. As a New England [Pg 68] woman—I beg pardon—young lady, I am proud of Boston, proud of the honor they are doing to Him. But after all, the Hub must imitate. We took the crown off.
Before he left, a new and exquisite idea came into my head—some people may think it a little flighty, but you will understand all the poetry it contains. I have a canary bird—for I love birds with all the inborn intensity of genius—so old that his feathers are nothing more than a creamy white. ”

“ A circus was nothing to them—neither is a theatre. Some of them were dressed in red, some in yellow, some in blue; one had on purple—all fitting just as tight as the skin to a rabbit's back. Each one had a boy's cap on his head; and, in fact, they all looked like boys out on a spree. There was a place just above the long tavern where most of these fellows always took their horses after a little run and blow—that was a little, cubby house, built up high from the ground, in which some men stood like captains on a steamboat. ”

“ Since my reports have appeared in what the newspapers call the world of letters—I say it modestly, but truth is truth—Cousin E. E. has been sweet as maple-sugar to me, I can tell you. She had her eye teeth cut in Vermont, and understood that Queen Victoria knew there was one notch above the crown when she took to writing books. I say nothing; but there is an aristocracy that cuts its own way through all social flummery, like an eagle among chippen birds. That is real live genius; and if New England hasn't got her share of that, I don't know where its head-quarters are. ”

“ Early in the morning I sent down for my pink silk dress. Cousin E. E. looked as if she was going to say something against it, at first; but, after a little, her face cleared up, and I heard her muttering:
"This is the third time. Nothing on earth but a woman of genius could stand that; but she has got enough to carry it off."
I said nothing, but thought of that bill, and just made a calculation of how much it would cost a woman to rig herself out if she went to many parties, and only wore a dress that cost five hundred dollars once. ”