“Bless my heart, it seems as if I heard'em now! 'Hurrah for Lafayette and Mayor Quincy! Hurrah for Madam Hancock and the pretty girls! Hurrah for Col. May!' 'Three cheers for Boston! Now, then! Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!'”
And here the old lady stopped, out of breath, with her cap askew, her spectacles on the end of her nose, and her knitting much the worse for being waved enthusiastically in the air, while she hung over the arm of her chair, shrilly cheering an imaginary Lafayette. The girls clapped their hands, and Tom hurrahed with all his might, saying, when he got his breath, “Lafayette was a regular old trump; I always liked him.”
“My dear! what a disrespectful way to speak of that great man,” said grandma, shocked at Young America's irreverence.
“Well, he was a trump, anyway, so why not call him one?” asked Tom, feeling that the objectionable word was all that could be desired.
“What queer gloves you wore then,” interrupted Fanny, who had been trying on the much-honored glove, and finding it a tight fit.
“Much better and cheaper than we have now,” returned grandma, ready to defend “the good old times” against every insinuation. “You are an extravagant set now-a-days, and I really don't know what you are coming to. By the way, I've got somewhere two letters written by two young ladies, one in 1517, and the other in 1868. The contrast between the two will amuse you, I think.”
After a little search, grandma produced an old portfolio, and selecting the papers, read the following letter, written by Anne Boleyn before her marriage to Henry VIII, and now in the possession of a celebrated antiquarian:
DEAR MARY, I have been in town almost a month, yet I cannot say I have found anything in London extremely agreeable. We rise so late in the morning, seldom before six o'clock, and sit up so late at night, being scarcely in bed before ten, that I am quite sick of it; and was it not for the abundance of fine things I am every day getting I should be impatient of returning into the country.
My indulgent mother bought me, yesterday, at a merchant's in Cheapside, three new shifts, that cost fourteen pence an ell, and I am to have a pair of new stuff shoes, for my Lord of Norfolk's ball, which will be three shillings.
The irregular life I have led since my coming to this place has quite destroyed my appetite. You know I could manage a pound of bacon and a tankard of good ale for my breakfast, in the country, but in London I find it difficult to get through half the quantity, though I must own I am generally eager enough for the dinner hour, which is here delayed till twelve, in your polite society.