Oh, sister! that was a trying season! In less than three minutes the sidewalk was swarming with dirty-faced children. I might as well have been in a wasps" nest. The spiteful imps buzzed around me so--little girls, with lank hair falling over their eyes; lazy boys, swaggering like drunken men, and swearing like troopers; and a woman--the boy who smoked called her mother--who stood on a doorstep, with a hand on each hip, scolding like fury. I kept my finger up. They would not hear a word I said, but I felt it my duty to do that much, when a very gentlemanly man in blue regimentals touched my arm, and observed in the kindest way that things were getting so mixed and unpleasant perhaps I would permit him to escort me round the corner. You know, sister, I always had a power in the lift of my finger. It was wonderfully manifest just as this gentleman crossed the street, and must have astonished him, for the children hushed up at once, and huddled back to the doorstep like a flock of lambs, which was an evidence of moral suasion I take pride in reporting to the Society.
VI.
HE HAS COME.
Sisters:--As a representative of your august body, I ought now to have been in an atmosphere of royalty--Imperial royalty, which counts at A No. 1, as kings are put down. The young potentate of all the Russias, with all his ships and things, ought to have been on hand a week ago; but he still lingers on the "rolling sea and briny deep," a prey, it is dreadfully to be feared, to sea-sickness--which, they tell me, is heart-rending--and storms which are liable to aggravate the sea-sickness.
I sympathize with that young man in all the depths of my feminine nature--which are getting bottomless from the great need of compa.s.sion which human life exhibits to the thinking mind. He ought to have been here when our enthusiasm was at its hottest point. Then he would have had the stormiest sort of a welcome. The soldiers were ready to file out any minute; the mouths of ever so many cannon were burning to let off fire; all the ships would have burst into a storm of flags at the first gun. People couldn"t but just keep from shouting every time they met each other. But the young man didn"t come. He hasn"t come yet, and all the enthusiasm is burning down to cinders and ashes. When he does come, I"m afraid it"ll be like putting a mess of apples into an oven after the pan of baked pork and beans has been drawn out--half roasted, and hard at the core when you cut "em.
This is a great country, my friends--in fact, very extensive--but you can"t wake it up to an earthquake of enthusiasm about the same person more than once. That prince had better have struck when the iron was red-hot. He didn"t, and so I can"t tell you anything about him, except that he isn"t more at sea than the rest of us. When he does come, depend upon it, there will be an uprising among the females of this great city; and foremost of her s.e.x will be your representative, faithful to her trust, and ready, with a modest helping hand, to lead this young person into the paths of propriety.
He has come at last, but the bitter-sweet of hope and fear has been given us as daily food for two weeks past, and the wormwood of ceaseless apprehension took the place of the yellow berries, and nightshade darkness settled down upon us. Lovely young girls cried over their ball-dresses of illusion, and wondered if _their_ hopes would thin off into the same slimpsy nothingness. Middle-aged ladies, whose hair needs no powder, and whose teeth never ache, began to falter in the dancing steps practised in the private recesses of their own palatial homes, and wondered if their joints were to be twisted and racked into new-born graces, only to settle down into rusty stiffness again without having fascinated the Russian soul out of that princely bosom.
Of course it is right and proper that an opportunity to study the antiquities of a nation should be offered to every potentate and prince that honors our Republican sh.o.r.es by setting his high-born foot upon them, and it is highly proper that first-cla.s.s specimens should be in readiness the moment he enters a ball-room. That is what people tell me has always been the custom at b.a.l.l.s given to princes, and it isn"t likely that new rules are to be laid down for the benefit of a lot of girls, anyhow. Governors and mayors are not often so young as they have been. As a general thing, their wives are not troubled with an epidemic of youth and beauty. It is an awful omission in the laws, but these dignified chaps can"t get up young and dashing wives for the occasion, when a great high potentate from over seas shines down upon us in the dancing way. I haven"t a doubt they would like to sacrifice themselves and astonish the world by so doing, but common people would be apt to call it bigamy. So they have to do the very best they can with such wives as they have got, and furbish them up with diamonds, laces, flounces, and a dancing-master, till they answer to begin with.
I don"t mean to be hard or sarcastical on this subject, but in these times, when it is so easy for a man to put away his wife, couldn"t this official potentate get a temporary divorce just for the occasion, especially if the kingly visitor happens to be young and very fond of dancing. It would give us young girls a chance.
Don"t think that I am putting on airs, or that I don"t feel reverential when age is mentioned, but Emperors" sons don"t come to our free land of liberty every day, and girls are so plenty that old folks ought to stand back. Far be it from Phmie Frost, on her own humble merits, to build upon opening that ball with the Imperial Duke of all the Russias; but a Society like ours has its social, moral, and scientific claims. As for literature, since my reports have been honored by publication, I must maintain the dignity of the position. If dignity and age is to lead in this grand ceremonial, I have kept school, and--well, yes--no, one could say that I--in fact, as to years, am I not competent to open the ball with any prince that can come across the ocean, be he boy or patriarch?
There, that sentence is off my mind, and I can go on without a hitch of the pen.
In other respects I have been silently but surely preparing myself. The Society has been liberal, and most of my savings were in the bank, rolling up interest beautifully, when I came from my childhood"s home.
Then there was a handsome profit on the donation of eggs and b.u.t.ter and maple-sugar which came in the freight train before I started. I attended to the sale myself at the market, and had nothing to do with that Mr.
Middleman people talk so awfully about as a cheat and a general grabber.
Well, I d.i.c.kered the things off at a good price, as I was a-saying, and have got the money safe in my bosom--a hiding-place sacred to myself alone.
Thus lifted above all mercenary anxieties, I gave my attention entirely to the self-improvement necessary to my appearance before his highness as a representative character on whom the eyes of all Sprucehill were fixed. I would say the world--only for the modest consciousness that comes over me when I think of myself as a genius.
VII.
THE FRENCH DRESS-MAKER.
Alpaca does make a first-cla.s.s dress for our social gatherings and literary circles in Sprucehill, and when puffed out behind, and trimmed promiscuously with flutings, it sometimes has a sumptuous appearance elsewhere; but for a ball, in which one aims to dance with a great grand Archduke of all the Russias--excuse me for saying it, but alpaca is not quite the thing. Doubtful of my own imperfect judgment, I asked a fashionable dress-maker in the Third Avenue, who had "Madame" spelt with an E on her tin sign at the door, and she said: "It wasn"t the thing for a lady entirely, by no manner of means," and her tongue had a rich roll to it, which satisfied me that Ireland had sympathized with France in her troubles, to the extent of getting the language a little mixed.
"No," says she, a leaning both elbows on her counter, and a looking at me from head to foot. "Madame should have a _robe de_ silk, very complete, with flowers in her hair entirely, and an overskirt to the fore, garnitured with Limerick point."
"An overskirt before," says I, lifting both hands, satchel and all.
"Why, every skirt that I"ve seen in the street, or anywhere else, was puckered and bunched up behind," says I. "Excuse me, but I really couldn"t think of wearing "em in any other way."
The French dress-maker--I know she was French by the letter E after Madam, and because the sign said she was from Paris. Well, she colored up, and looked every which way at first, but then she gave a skimping laugh, and said that I didn"t understand French. I--I didn"t understand French! I who had studied "French without a Master" as a speciality, with the most intelligent member of our circle, and conversed in the language as directed by that excellent book so fluently that the p.r.o.nunciation sounded almost like English nipped off a little! This was too much.
The clear grit, which lies at the bottom of every New England woman"s heart, riled up in mine when that cherished accomplishment was cast into disrepute.
"Madame," says I, putting a keen emphasis on that E, "I came here to inquire about the most fashionable way of making a dress, not to give or take a lesson in the languages. Permit me to say I never could submit to wear an overskirt in the way you speak of--wrong side before--why, it would look dreadfully."
"But Madame does not understand; I speak English so much in this country that my own language gets knocked into smithereens. I beg pardon--into confusion. Madame must be very perfect herself to detect it."
I felt a smile creeping over my lips. Really, sisters, I had been too hard on the poor woman. It was not her fault if my ear was so very correct that nothing but the purest accent could satisfy me. She saw this look dawning upon my face, and I knew that she felt relieved by the way her elbows settled down on the counter again.
"If madame will take a chair--that is, repose herself. Madame--"
"Excuse me," says I, benignly, for I didn"t want to hurt her feelings again. "_Mademoiselle_, if you please."
"Pardon me," says she, humbly.
"Just so," says I, benignly. "Now supposing we go on about this ball-dress. How much silk will it take?"
The woman sat and thought to herself ever so long. Then she counted her fingers over once or twice. Then she said she didn"t exactly know how much, which is the way with dress-makers all over the world, I do believe.
"But one won"t buy a dress without knowing how much to ask for," says I.
"Say twelve yards now?"
The woman lifted herself right off from the counter, and sat staring at me.
"Twelve!" says she, "eighteen at the least."
I felt as if some one had struck me. Eighteen yards for a dress, and gored all to pieces at that!
"Some of your dress-makers in Broadway would want more than that!" says she, "and send for more and more after that."
I made no answer, but took up my satchel and walked straight out of the door.
Eighteen yards of silk for a dress! The thought of it kept me awake all night.
The next morning I went right up to the palatial residence of my cousin, Emily Elizabeth Dempster, feeling that she would expect me to enter on that subject about bringing up children, which was my duty; but I was so down in the mouth about that dress, that everything like a moral idea had just swamped itself in those eighteen yards of silk; and instead of giving advice, I went into that house to beg for it, feeling all the time as if somebody had dumped me down from a mighty high horse onto that stone doorstep, and left me to travel home afoot. In fact, I felt as if coming to that house to ask about ball-dresses, instead of giving instruction, was a mean sort of business. But the ambition of a great, worldly idea was burning in my bosom, and I resolved to press forward to the mark of the prize of the high calling.
Mercy on me! it is a ball-dress, not a cla.s.s-meeting, that I am writing about. Oh, my sisters! is it true that black angels and white angels ever do get to fighting in a human soul, just as they do down South? If so, they had a tussle in my bosom that morning, and the black fellow came out best, with a gorgeous silk dress a-floating and a-rustling out from his triumphant right hand, and the splendid shadow of a great Grand Duke following after.
Cousin Emily Elizabeth was just coming downstairs, flounced and puffed and tucked up about the waist, till she was all over in a flutter of silk, and lace, and black beads, with a dashing bonnet on her head high enough for a trooper"s training-cap, all shivery with lace and bows, with one long feather curling half way round it, and a white tuft sticking up straight on the top, looking so "cute and saucy.
Emily Elizabeth looked a little scared when she saw me coming in with my satchel; but when I told her what I wanted, her eyes brightened up, and she laughed as easy as a blackbird sings. "Oh, is that all!" says she.
"I thought it was about the children. I"ll give you a note to my dress-maker. Styles all French, and _so recherche_." Look in the dictionary, sisters, and you will discover that this means something first-cla.s.s.
She took out a pencil and a square piece of paper with her name printed on it, and wrote something French, with the number of a house, which I won"t give, not wanting any of my friends to be talked out of a year"s growth, as I was.
"There," says she. "The cream-on-cream all go to her. She"ll fit you out splendidly. Leave it all to her. Good-morning, cousin; I must go; but my daughter is in the drawing-room--she will entertain you."
"Just so," says I, putting the card in my satchel, and making swift tracks for the out-door; "but I haven"t time to be entertained."