All-compensating nature! tossing money-bags to twisted features, and divorcing beauty from brains; unfortunate they, whom in thy hurry thou hast overlooked, bestowing neither beauty, brains, nor money!
That was not all I saw from under my parasol, on that sunny morning. I saw a young girl—bonnetless, shawlless—beautiful as God often makes the poor—struggling in the grasp of two sturdy policemen. Tears streamed from her eyes, while with clasped hands, as she shrank away from their rough gripe, she plead for release. What was her sin I know not. It might have been the first downward step in a life of unfriended and terrible temptation; for the agony in that young face could not have been feigned; or—she might have been seized only on suspicion; but in vain she begged, and prayed, and wept. Boys shouted; men, whose souls were leprous with sin, jeered; and heartless, scornful women “passed by on the other side.”
The poor young creature (none the less to be pitied, had she sinned) goaded to madness by the gathering crowd, seized her long trailing tresses, and tossing them up like a veil over her shame-flushed and beautiful face, resigned herself to her fate.
Many will think any expression of sympathy for this poor unfortunate, uncalled for. There are enough to defend that side of the question, and to them I willingly leave it; there are others, who, with myself, could wish that young girls thus (it may be innocently) accused, should not, before trial, be dragged roughly through the public streets, like shameless, hardened offenders. There are those who, like myself, as they look upon the faces of their own fair young daughters, and think of the long life of happiness or misery before them, will wish that the sword of the law might be tempered with more mercy.
The two scenes above recorded, are not all that I saw from under my parasol, on that sunny morning. I passed the great bow-windows of the St. Nicholas—those favorite lounging-places for male guests, and other gentlemen, well pleased to criticise lady pedestrians, who, thanks to the inventor of parasols, can dodge their battery of glances at will.
Not so, the gentlemen; who weary with travel and sight-seeing, unthinkingly fall asleep in those luxurious arm-chairs, in full view of the public, with their heels on the window-sill, their heads hanging on one side, and their wide-open mouths so suggestive of the——snore—that I fancy I hear. Heaven forgive these comical-looking sleepers the cachinatory sideaches they have often given me!
Was there ever any thing uglier than a man asleep? Single women who have traveled in railroad cars, need not be too modest to answer!
One of the first things I noticed in New York, was the sharp, shrill, squeaking, unrefined, vixenish, uneducated voices of its women. How inevitably such disenchanting discord, breaks the spell of beauty!
Fair New Yorkers, keep your mouths shut, if you would conquer.