As I have said—to be a woman in America is to be everything. That is why I think it unreasonable that Imperial nobility should be forbidden to match itself here. Once we had aristocracy of money, but since the war, when people became rich in no time by selling shoddy and things, that has levelled down like a sand heap. But one aristocracy is left now, and that is the aristocracy of mind. Genius is the nobility of the mind. Now as long as the Prince unites himself with that, what has any one, even his august father, to say against it?
But there is no doubt I have given the Imperial heart some anxiety. His manner was so impressive; his spy-glass was levelled at my countenance so often, that it is not to be wondered at if the violence of his passionate admiration did get about and fly on the wings of the wind to his Imperial home. There it was sure to make an excitement. American ladies have married lords and marquises in England, counts and princes in other countries, and make first-rate lordesses and marchionesses and princesses too. In fact, just as good as the born nobility, and better too; but up to this time it is left to a lovely woman of genius to exalt America into the region of imperial highness. Money—for your lords, etc., etc., etc., generally want that with American beauty and grace—money has done its utmost. Now genius comes in, and modesty crowns itself.
I am satisfied that the great Grand Duke is only waiting, from a feeling of doubt and modesty. My heart compassionates him. Up to the first of January, I could do no more. Female propriety forbade it, but now—now all is changed. Modesty is disenthralled.
It is Leap Year. St. Valentine's Day approaches. The windows of every book-store are a-blazing with valentines, burning with love, eloquent of the tender passions, pictorial and poetical.
The Queen of England offered herself to Prince Albert. It must have been a touching scene. How modestly she suggested the flame that was kindled in her youthful heart, and still lies smouldering in the ashes of that good man's grave. I don't think she waited for Leap Year—but I will. No one shall say that Phœmie Frost has forgotten what is due to her sex.
St. Valentine's Day emancipates the womanly heart. I have bought a valentine, white satin, surrounded by a frost work of silver lace, sprinkled with gold stars. On the satin is a little boy with wings, hiding behind a rose-bush, firing arrows through it from a bow which he lifts up roguishly. These arrows are aimed at an Imperial figure mounted on a wild horse, and running down a buffalo—a unique and beautifully suggestive idea. This was the poem which gushed with spontaneosity from my disenthralled mind:
Come back, come back, from the buffalo raid!
Here is fairer game for you;
At thy feet the lovingest heart is laid
That ever a Grand Duke knew.
A lady rich in womanly pride,
Whose soul clings unto thine,
Is ready to be an Imperial bride—
Kneel with thee at Hymen's shrine.
Come back, come back, or thy haughty sire
Will command, and all is lost;
But he cannot extinguish this holy fire
In the bosom of——
Sisters, I ask you now, isn't this a gem? It isn't just the thing to put your name to a valentine, they tell me, but this is something deeper and more poetic than such things usually are. It means mischief, as Cousin Dempster says. It is a proposal, buried in roses and veiled in sweet and modest verse, such as a lady might almost send at any time with a few blushes. It will reach him out in that vast wilderness of dead grass, where he has been deluded off by Mr. Sheridan, and has risked his precious life in a terrific manner, shooting great, monstrous buffaloes, which are animals, they tell me, something like an overgrown ox, only the hair is longer, and they are kind of hunched-up about the upper end of the back, just as if the last city fashions among ladies had got to be the rage out there.
Imagine my feelings, sisters, when I heard that the Grand Duke was off with that fellow and a squad of wild Indians, all in war-paint and tomahawks, hunting these terrific creatures. It almost made me feel like a widow. There he was, brought up so tenderly, eating broiled buffalo hump, and drinking champagne and things out in the open lots, as big as all out-doors, and sleeping in a tent. Think of it! With his own right hand he shot down twenty-five of these humpbacked monsters, and means to carry their skins home with him to Russia. I suppose Mr. Philip Sheridan will be for studying the military tactics of Russia from St. Petersburg to Siberia as soon as the great Grand Duke gets back, for he isn't the sort of fellow, folks tell me, to give up a chance like that. Governor Palmer, of Illinois, has, at any rate, given him leave of absence from the Chicago fires, and there isn't anything much to keep him from hunting in Siberia if he wants to.
Well, I got my valentine all ready; directed it to the Grand Duke in a delicate, ladylike way, and took it with my own hands down to the post-office.