THE THREE CALLS.

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BY H. L. JONES.

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The sofas and ottomans were covered with crimson velvet; the morning sun streamed through folds of rich stuff, that tempered and warmed its light; the tread was unheard on the thick carpet, and the glowing coal sent a cheerful smile over the ample apartments.

Alice and Louisa Stanwood were employed much like other young ladies of their age, hemming long, mysterious slips of muslin, or embroidering in worsted, and now and then chatting of the last night’s party, or the gayeties of the coming evening. They were pretty, and rich, and young, and gay, and admired, and happy. They knew they had complexions and figures to be both studied and improved—at all events, not to be injured by the adoption of awkward habits. They were fully alive to the merits of the last new bonnet, and had their own opinions touching the “Elssler fling,” and the harmonies of Ole Bull. What with dressing and calling, and dining and driving, with parties, balls, and social cotillions; with sleeping good, long, renovating night’s sleep, and perhaps a little siesta after dinner, really the months, and even the years, went by with astonishing rapidity.

They had already whirled Alice into her twentieth and Louisa into her eighteenth winter. (Our city belles do not count life by summers,) yet placid smiles dwelt on their unruffled features, and even thought had passed, zephyr-like, over their brows, nor left a mark behind. Their laugh had a joyousness born of the present, in which neither hope nor memory had share. They had had no time to think, to feel, to suffer. But that there was suffering in the world they knew very well. They knew it by reading history, and the newspapers; nay, they knew, too, there was suffering of many sorts, and often and often had they dropped the sympathetic tear over the sentimental woes which the “cunning hand” of genius portrayed in the novel of the day.