I know of nothing that communicates half so much enjoyment to human life, as an educated woman. I mean one who joins social accomplishment, to literary instruction. Her conversation,
“More glad to me than to a miser money is.”
And a woman, I believe, is nowhere so admirable in wit, as under cover of a mask. She then expresses her own thoughts; the rein and curb are removed from her imagination, which expatiates more wildly from its previous restraints.
Nor are her triumphs merely intellectual, though not shared with feature or complexion, for in such cases the fancy outruns even the most vivid reality. Pliny thought Apelles had improved his Venus by leaving her unfinished; for the spectator would bring out beauties from the unformed marble, beyond the skill even of the divine artist.
There is besides, the emotion, the excitement of curiosity, of mystery, of adventure, and the interest of a first meeting and conversation, not cooled by a gradual acquaintance, which lend many new attractions to a woman, and which give a charm to the amusement of the masquerade, to which few minds can be insensible.
But why have not our Solons allowed you ladies masks in Pennsylvania?—Because they thought you better disguised in your own faces. No such thing; they thought them dangerous to your morals. Ladies think, like partridges, if their heads are hid, all is safe; but our legislators, who were wise and provident, looked out for a better security.
I have myself found one or two of the Christian virtues at a masquerade, very inconvenient, to say the least of them. Such amusements add but little to the immoralities of these old and refined communities; but the later the day the better to introduce them into a new country,—especially into the cloisters of your too innocent Hills. The folly, the nonsense, the wickedness of the world is far beyond the conception of you shepherdesses.
I placed myself last night under the escort of persons well versed in all the menus-plaisirs of the town, and passed the night out to see human nature in a part of her great book, which I had not yet perused. I followed the two biggest rogues of Paris for information, as one follows the pigs to get truffles.
The Palais Royal had our first visit. Here were both sexes in their fancy dresses and masks, and here was the dance in all its wantonness;
“Motus doceri gaudet Ionicos
Matura Virgo;”