The result of his investigation stood thus:—that he was a very charming young man, was Mr. Bromwell Sutton. He had a slender, well formed figure, which was encased in a fresh suit of the finest texture and most unexceptionable make. His features were regular, and of that accommodating order which allows the spectator to assign them any character he may choose. His complexion was fair and clear, his teeth were very white and his eyes very blue. His hair was dark, daintily glossed and perfumed with oil, and of a length, which, on so warm a day, would have made a silver arrow or a gilded bodkin a judicious application; and he had two elongated tufts on his upper lip, and a round one on his chin corresponding to the space between them. He wore a Panama hat of the most extensive circumference, and carried a pair of white gloves, either to be drawn on his hands or slapped on his knees, whichever circumstances might require; and the corner of a hem-stitched handkerchief of transparent cambrick stuck out of his pocket.
A handbill pasted on the sign-post next caught his eye, and, though it was a favorite saying with him that he “never read,” to be understood of course, not that he never had read, but that he knew enough already; he so far conquered his disdain of literature as to step forward and ascertain its purport. This, set forth in the interesting typographical variety which veteran advertisers so well comprehend, of large and small Romans, and Italics leaning some to the right and some to the left, and some standing perpendicular, was as follows:
“Mr. Azariah Chowders, celebrated throughout the Union for his eloquent, entertaining and instructive discourses on miscellaneous subjects, proposes delivering a lecture on the evening of the present instant, in the town hall of G——. The theme selected is, the Genius of the American People, one, which, from its intrinsic importance, requires no comment,” &c. &c.
He was interrupted by the rattle of a distant vehicle, and looking up the street, saw a chaise approaching which contained a single “individual,” as he mentally pronounced him. He drove a fine horse, and drew him up before the door of the inn. The chaise was a plain, common looking concern, full of travel-worn trunks and boxes, and its occupant was dressed in a light summer suit, rather neat, but entirely too coarse for gentility.
“It’s only a Yankee pedlar,” said Mr. Sutton to the landlord who was coming out, and entirely careless of being overheard by the stranger; and he walked up to his chamber, where he awakened a diminutive poodle, his travelling companion, from the siesta with which it was recruiting after its journey, and occupied himself in cracking his handkerchief at it, until an additional stir in the house indicated the approach of tea-time. He then came down, carrying Cupidon, for so was the animal appellated; and found in the bar-room a young gentleman, a law-student, to whom he had delivered a letter on his arrival, and who was a boarder in the house. The other stranger had, meanwhile, entered the room, and was cooling himself at an open window, with his short curling hair pushed back from a forehead remarkable in its whiteness and intellectual development, and crowning a face of strikingly handsome lineaments and prepossessing expression.
“How do you contrive to exist in this stupid place?” asked our dandy of his new acquaintance, whose name was Wallis; “they say there are some genteel people about,—have you any pretty girls among them to flirt with?”
“We have some pretty young ladies, but don’t use them for that purpose exactly,” replied Wallis; “we admire them, and wait on them and try to please them, and then, when we can afford it, we marry them, if they don’t object.”
“Have you seen anything of a lady vagabondising in this region,—a Miss Valeria North?”
“Miss Valeria North, the fashionable heiress of B——? the niece of the celebrated Judge North? what should she be doing here?”
“Oh, I don’t know,—it’s beginning to be genteel for people to get tired of society, and to go hunting up out-of-the-way places that one knows nothing about except from the maps; I heard in the railroad cars that she was making a tour along the river here, and was in hopes that I might fall in with her. What do you know of her?”