As the last ray of the golden orb flashed upon the vessel, Fitzgerald saw plainly that the Cross of Saint George floated at her ensign peak and that she was an enemy of his country. The stranger having drawn in sufficiently near to the land, now tacked, and in the uncertain haze of evening, faded away.
“I will be the first to communicate the glad tidings to my commander,” said the young officer, proudly; “and ere many days the haughty Briton shall humble himself to the stars of the republic.”
“Well said, my gallant boy,” cried Col. Howard, as he hobbled up to his future son-in-law, who started like one awakened from a glorious dream.
“Uncle,” said Fitzgerald with a smile, “I did not hear you enter.”
“No matter, boy,” said the old soldier, as he screwed his features into the proper expression for a severe twinge of the gout, and stood silent for a moment, and then as the pain evaporated, continued, “I heard you and am pleased with your thoughts; you must leave this evening.”
“Certainly,” said Fitzgerald, smiling.
The tea urn was now brought in, and the family of Colonel Howard assembled around the well spread table. A short blessing interrupted by a few short pishes and pshaws! on account of the severe pains that constantly seized the old gentleman’s leg, was now said by him; and then the evening meal was quietly and systematically disposed of. Sage surmises as to the course of the belligerent stranger, and sager speculations as to the result of her meeting with an American cruizer, now occupied the thoughts and conversational powers of the little party; at length Colonel Howard began to grow drowsy. His arm chair was now wheeled to the right about—he gave his blessing to his nephew with a good will, grasped his hand with the frankness of a soldier, and bade him adieu; then bringing his crutch to the third position of the manual, he went to sleep. Soon the young couple heard the old man muttering in his visions of the revolution, “on to Princeton—ha, there goes Knox, I know his fire—onward my boys—huzza, they fly—the day is ours,” and then a twinge of the gout played the deuce with his dream, and when it past away he slumbered as sweetly as a child upon its mother’s breast. Fitzgerald and Mary now departed for Mrs. Wilson’s, the former having taken his baggage in the carriage, so as to be ready to step from the ball room to the stage-coach.
Mrs. Wilson was one of those comets of fashion who regularly appear with every cycle of time, and who after setting the cities in a blaze, retire to the inland towns to renew their fires, and shine forth as planets of the first magnitude amid inferior stars; believing it to be better to be the head of a village than the tail of a city. It was currently reported by scandalising spinsters that she had been a milliner in England, and having a handsome person was hired by the manager of a country theatre, there to act the goddess in the play of Cherry and Fair Star. Here she entrapped the affections of a young nobleman, who by a mock marriage became her reputed husband. The honey moon soon passed away, and with the realities of wedded life, came the astounding denouement that the nobleman’s coachman had officiated as chaplain on the occasion, and that the marriage was a humbug. This was a downfall to Mrs. Wilson, but she had no help excepting to marry the butler of his lordship, a man of considerable wealth, and emigrate to America. His lordship was generous on the occasion: and the honest butler found himself with a wife, an estate, and an heir presumptive, all at the same moment. Having money and a handsome person, the beautiful and well dressed Mrs. Wilson soon imposed herself upon an aristocratic family in New York as a branch of a noble stock in England. Mr. Wilson, it may be proper to observe, died on his passage, and Mrs. Wilson was a widow when she made the highlands of Neversink.
There is over all those stale meat pies, ycleped large cities, a self-styled upper crust that rises in puffs above the solids. It rejects every thing that is not as light and as trifling as itself, and to say the least of it, has but little virtue or consistency. It covers the virtues and the vices of the social compact, and smothers in flour and paste the unhappy genius who endeavors to penetrate it. As nothing was made in vain, perhaps this self-important crust, like the web of the spider, was designed to catch the painted and gilded drones, whose presence and senseless buzzing might otherwise have disturbed the working party of mankind at their labors, and have caused them to leave the world to starve. To this upper stratum of society in New York, Mrs. Wilson was introduced by her new made friends, and she continued in the ascendent for three months, but unfortunately for human greatness, one evening at a large and fashionable rout, a noble marquis was announced, who to the astonishment of every person present exclaimed, as he was presented to Mrs. Wilson, “Poll Johnson are you here, when did you leave the millinary line?” This was sufficient—the party broke up in confusion, as though a case of plague had occurred in the circle. Mrs. Wilson fainted, and was sent home in a hack as a bundle of soiled linen is sent to the washerwomen, duly marked and numbered upon the outside; and the aristocratic family who had been imposed upon by her, went through with a three weeks’ purification at Saratoga Springs, whence they returned with a sin offering, in the shape of a real nobleman—a perfect simpleton of a count—whose soul lay in whiskers, and whose heart was in bottle green.
Mrs. Wilson, like the jack daw, stripped of borrowed plumes, left New York in great haste, and settled upon a country farm near Belleview, where at the opening of my sketch she reigned mistress of the ton.