Well, my new house is finished—and so am
I. I hope Mrs. Potiphar is satisfied. Every
body 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 escritories? Do I want or molu things? Do
I know any thing about pictures and statues? In
the name of heaven do I want rose-pink bed-curtains
to give my grizzly old phiz a delicate “auroral
hue,” as Cream Cheese says of Mrs. P.'s
complexion? Because I have made fifty

[figure description] Page 098.[end figure description]

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 for
lorn 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

[figure description] Page 099.[end figure description]

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.

“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

[figure description] Page 100.[end figure description]

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?

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[figure description] Blank Page.[end figure description]

[figure description] Page 101.[end figure description]

I wanted her, she was willing to take me,—being
sensible enough to know that the stock and the
lots had an incumbrance. Voilà 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

[figure description] Page 102.[end figure description]

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 is unkind of me,

[figure description] Page 103.[end figure description]

when I have been hard at work all day, trying
to make and secure the money that gives her and
her family every thing 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

[figure description] Page 104.[end figure description]

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, every body 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

[figure description] Page 105.[end figure description]

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 every
body 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

[figure description] Page 106.[end figure description]

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
matinées 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, are n't you,
with your liveries and illimitable expenses, and
your low bows to money, and your immense

[figure description] Page 107.[end figure description]

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 don't 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 goreign 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 built it. What she said was
perfectly true; we were getting down town, there
was no doubt of the growing inconvenience of

[figure description] Page 108.[end figure description]

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?”

[figure description] Page 109.[end figure description]

“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 sideboard; 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

[figure description] Page 110.[end figure description]

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. Crœsus'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 all a whim of yours.”

[figure description] Page 111.[end figure description]

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 is 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

[figure description] Page 112.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 113.[end figure description]

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 for ever.

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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

[figure description] Page 115.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 116.[end figure description]

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.

[figure description] Page 117.[end figure description]

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
cabinet-maker. 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

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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 wood-work, 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

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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
Crœsus'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, &c. 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

[figure description] Page 120.[end figure description]

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 madam, 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

[figure description] Page 121.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 122.[end figure description]

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, and 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

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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

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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

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they are the secrets of your success. Why not
have the same elements in your house? Why
pitch every century, country, and fashion, higgledy-piggledy
into your parlors and dining-room?
Have every thing you can get, in
heaven's name, but have every thing 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. Cræsus 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. Cræsus smiles, I inwardly thank
him for his charity. Wall street is Cræsus'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

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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

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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

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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.”

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 any thing 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

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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 any body
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.

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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 and a fine house precisely
as your library does, and it will be

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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 soirées are over for the season, and
Mrs. P. begins to talk of the watering places.
I am getting gradually resigned; but only gradually.

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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 about, 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. Crœsus 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 every body 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 Minerba Cattle.

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p534-162

Newport, August.

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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 Crœsus says. I suppose
every body 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 every where, 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 every thing that every body says

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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

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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

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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 jour 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.

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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 chamber-maid
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.

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“ `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,

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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 any thing, 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

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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, &c. 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

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unlocked, he took down only a bit of wood,
bound in blue morocco, which he turned slowly
over, so that every body 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 any body 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

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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
every thing else. He says such nice things about
people that nobody else would dare to say, and
that every body 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

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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 any body 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

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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 toward 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

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talking as he approached; and he came up to
me.

“Minna, my dear,” said he, “I hear every
body 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 of 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

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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.

And so the thing went on multiplaying 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 can

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not 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
any body 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

[figure description] Page 150.[end figure description]

of woman 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 Tête de Choux, that
it is a very warm day, and that Newport is
charmante. I don't suppose the knowledge 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

[figure description] Page 151.[end figure description]

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
any thing 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 accomplished 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

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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 tête de veau farci. Aren't
you coming to the beach? Every body 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

[figure description] Page 153.[end figure description]

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,—

[figure description] Page 154.[end figure description]

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 views of things,' that to enjoy
the high `privilege' of reading books,—of cultivating
their minds, and, when they are married,

[figure description] Page 155.[end figure description]

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 fine 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

[figure description] Page 156.[end figure description]

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.

[figure description] Page 157.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 158.[end figure description]

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
Peony's. 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

[figure description] Page 159.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 160.[end figure description]

that it is just the thing for her. She wore it
at the ball 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 boquet:

“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

[figure description] Page 161.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 162.[end figure description]

balck 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

[figure description] Page 163.[end figure description]

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 prononcè 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 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.”

[figure description] Page 164.[end figure description]

At that moment young Crœsus “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 any body's being enthusiastic
about any thing. 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. Crœsus?”

“Tolerably,” returned Timon.

“Oh! but Mr. Crœsus! to go to the glen
and skip stones, and to walk on the cliff, and
drive to Bateman's, and the fort, and to go to
the beach by moonlight; and then the

[figure description] Page 165.[end figure description]

bowling-alley, and the archery, and the Germania. Oh!
it's a splendid place. But, perhaps, you don't
like natural scenery, Mr. Crœsus?”

“Perhaps not,” said Mr. Crœsus.

“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.

“Kruz 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 drygoods 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

[figure description] Page 166.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 167.[end figure description]

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 people through the blinds.
I'm afraid, myself, it's coming to that. Every
body 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.

[figure description] Page 168.[end figure description]

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 régime. 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

[figure description] Page 169.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 170.[end figure description]

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'œuvre 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,

[figure description] Page 171.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 172.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 173.[end figure description]

afterward to refit her faith, probably. Daisy
Clover thinks it's heavenly. Darling little Daisy!
life is an endless German cotillon 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

[figure description] Page 174.[end figure description]

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, not-withstanding.
You couldn't bring old Potiphar

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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 apprehension 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 any
where else,—perhaps it isn't,—in most ways it
cetainly is not. I don't say, cetainly, that
there's a higher tone of life in London or Paris
than in New York, but only that, whatever it

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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.

“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

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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 mean while. 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 any thing less, because
I would see it better. You are the natural
fruit of this state of things, O Minerva Tattle!
By their 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'm 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

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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 things 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 Crœ
sus, 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

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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.

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V. The Potiphars in Paris. A LETTER FROM MISS CAROLINE PETTITOES TO MRS. SETTUM DOWNE.

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p534-214

Paris, October.

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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 Cræ
sus?” and then he and Mr. Timon Cræsus lifted
their brows knowingly, and smiled, and glanced
compassionately around the table.

“Paris, Paris!” cried Mrs. Potiphar; “you

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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.

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“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 Crœsus
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

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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 the
air of paying a great compliment:

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

We were all silent 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,

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“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 don'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

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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

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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

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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 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

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as we all rose she went up to him, and took his
arm tenderly. It was an unsual 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.

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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 “to-morrow” 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 every where we
were going, and every body 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.

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