"I should have been the most ungrateful of men had it not been so; and yours too, Emily I hope"——
He stopt, he hardly knew why, while, with her eyes fixed on the ground, she answered slowly, "I am happy, very happy now!"
A feeling of profound respect and admiration held Mr. Dalton silent for a few seconds, and then he said, in the tone of one who expresses an earnest conviction, "You are the most noble minded woman I ever knew."
Mrs. Beauchamp made no answer, and it was not till they stood together in the hall, that she said in her natural tone of kind and calm cheerfulness, "And now, Mr. Dalton, let us look for Edmund and Fanny; and if you please, in order that they may learn of our mistakes that trust is the nobler part of love, we shall tell them this story of The Lost Letter."
From Frazer's Magazine.
LIFE AT A WATERING-PLACE.
THE LIONNE.
By Charles Astor Bristed.
One day at Oldport Springs went off pretty much like another. There was the same continual whirl, and flurry, and toiling after pleasure—never an hour of repose—scarcely enough cessation for the two or three indispensable meals. When they had walked, and flirted, and played ten-pins, and driven, and danced all day, and all night till two in the morning, the women retired to their rooms, and the men retired to the gambling-house (which being an illegal establishment had, on that account, a greater charm in their eyes), and kept it up there till broad daylight; notwithstanding which, they always contrived to appear at breakfast a few hours after as fresh as ever, and ready to begin the same round of dissipation. Indeed it was said that Tom Edwards and his most ardent followers among the boys never went to bed at all, but on their return from "fighting the tiger," bathed, changed their linen, and came down to the breakfast-room, taking the night's sleep for granted. It was a perpetual scene of excitement, relieved only by the heavy and calm figure of Sumner, who, silent and unimpassioned, largely capacious of meat and drink, a recipient of every diversion, without being excited by any, went through all the bowling, and riding, and polking, and gambling, with the gravity of a commis performing the national French dance at the Mabille. There was much rivalry in equipages, especially between Ludlow, Benson, and Löwenberg, who drove the three four-in-hands of the place, and emulated one another in horses, harness, and vehicles—even setting up attempts at liveries, in which they found some imitators (for you can't do any thing in America, however unpopular, without being imitated): and every horse, wagon, man-servant, and livery, belonging to every one, was duly chronicled in the Oldport correspondence of the Sewer and the Jacobin, which journals were wont one day to Billingsgate the "mushroom aristocracy of wealth," and the next to play Jenkins for their glorification. Le Roi, who owned no horses, and had given up dancing as soon as he found that there were many of the natives who could out-dance him, and that the late hours were bad for his complexion, attached himself to any or every married lady who was at all distinguished for beauty or fortune; and then went about asking, with an ostentatious air of mystery,—"Est-ce qu' on parle beaucoup de moi et Madame Chose?" Sometimes he deigned to turn aside for an heiress; and as he was a very amusing and rather ornamental man, the girls were always glad to have his company; but the good speculations took care not to fall in love with him, or to give him sufficient encouragement (although a Frenchman does not require a great deal) to justify a declaration on his part. Perhaps the legend about the mutual-benefit subscription club hurt his prospects, or it may have been his limited success in dancing. The same reason—as much, at least, as the assumed one of their vulgarity—kept Mr. Simpson, and other "birds" of his set, out of the exclusive society. For dancing was the one great article in the code of the fashionables to which all other amusements or occupations were subordinate. There was a grand dress-ball once a week at one or other of the hotels, and two undress-balls—hops they were called: but most of the exclusives went to these also in full dress, and both balls and hops usually lasted till three or four in the morning. Then on the off-nights "our set" got up their own little extempore balls in the large public parlor, to the music of some volunteer pianist, and when the weather was bad they danced in the same place all day; when it was good these informal matinées did not generally last more than two or three hours. Then there were serenades given about day-break, by young men who were tired of "the tiger"—nominally to some particular ladies, but virtually, of course, to the whole hotel, or nearly so—and the only music they could devise for these occasions were waltzes or polkas. Ashburner made a calculation that, counting in the serenades, the inhabitants of Oldport were edified by waltz, polka, and redowa music (in those days the Schottisch was not), eleven hours out of the twenty-four, daily. And at last, when Mr. Monson, the Cellarius of New-York, came down with various dancing-girls, native and imported, to give lessons to such aspiring young men as might desire it, first Mrs. Harrison and other women, who, though wealthy and well-known, were not exactly "of us," used to drop in to look at the fun; and, finally, all the exclusives, irresistibly attracted by the sound of fiddles and revolving feet, thronged the little room up-stairs, where the dancing class was assembled, and from looking on, proceeded to join in the exercises. Ladies, beaux, and dancing-girls, were all mingled together, whirling and capering about in an apartment fifteen feet square, which hardly gave them room to pass one another. Benson was the only person who entered his protest against the proceeding. He declared it was a shame that his countrywomen should degrade themselves so before foreigners; but his expostulations were only laughed at: nor could he even persuade his wife and sister-in-law to quit the place, though he stalked off himself in high dudgeon, and wrote a letter to the Episcopal Banner, inveighing against the shameless dissipation of the watering-places. For Harry was on very good terms with the religious people in New-York, and was professedly a religious man, and had some sort of idea that he mixed with the fashionables to do them good; which was much like what we sometimes hear of a parson who follows the hounds to keep the sportsmen from swearing, and about as successful. Trying with all his might to serve God, and to live with the exclusives, he was in a fair way to get a terrible fall between two stools.