[3] When General Jackson, on his tour through the Northern States, visited Lowell, the girls employed in the cotton manufactories of that place turned out, dressed in white, to welcome the American President.
[4] The usual American appellation for living at service.
CHAPTER IV.
Joining the Ladies.—Education of a Fashionable Young Lady in New York—Her Accomplishments.—Tea without Gentlemen.—Commercial Disasters not affecting the Routine of Amusements in the City of New York.—The Theatre.—Forest come back to America.—Opinions of the Americans on Shakspeare and the Drama.—Their Estimation of Forest as an Actor.—Forest and Rice contrasted.
“A maiden never bold;
Of spirit so still and quiet, that her motion
Blush’d at herself. And she—in spite of nature,
Of years, of country, credit, everything,—
To fall in love with what she feared to look on!”
Othello, Act I. Scene 3.
On returning to the parlour, we found the ladies, whose number had considerably increased by the arrival of some “transient people,” alone; the gentlemen having “sneaked off” to their respective counting-rooms. They were grouped round the piano, on which one of those little creatures that played the exclusives of the boarding-house was “practising” the “Infernal Waltz” from “Robert the Devil;” the rest were talking, whispering, giggling, or amusing themselves with feeling the quality of each other’s dresses.
“What a delightful creature that Miss *** is, I declare!” said an elderly lady, whose embonpoint sufficiently proclaimed her Dutch origin,—English women being said to grow rather thin in America; “her mother must be proud of her.”
“Yes,” replied another lady, who was rather thin; “but it is said she has not yet paid the teacher who taught her daughter all those pretty things.”
“That is nothing to the purpose; I speak of the young lady,” rejoined the good-natured woman.