Miss Catherine's papa Silas was rich, and Miss Catherine was fashionable. She came out and offered a book-muslin view of herself to two hundred and fifty warm people. Bouquets, ay, double-bouquets, were sent her by insane beaux, by means of which young gentlemen who only knew two ladies in the room were converted into flower-stands for an hour or two, trying to look easy and at home, by gently rubbing the camelias against their noses from time to time. And when Miss Catherine had given a ball herself, then did she become perfect in manner; then handled she her fan with consummate dexterity, and adopted an expression of intense fashionable agony when a badly-dressed woman passed by, or a clumsy Unshuffleshankian waltzer ran against her. Then sighed she in German to a gentleman from Connecticut, lisped in French to a dandy from Philadelphia, and whispered in Tuscan to her Italian master, if he happened to be within hail. Then waltzed she with young men, warm or cold, dry or moist; she would have taken a turn with a steaming tea-kettle, if tea-kettles wore white vests and valsed. Then danced she like a Bacchante, and only left the ball-room just before the lights; while melancholy Silas, pining for his pillow, clasped his hands and sometimes muttered, 'Ultima July;' and sometimes, as if desparing of rest below, 'in cœlo quies.' To have seen Miss Catherine Julia, you would have sworn that she was a descendant of Lord Lanesboro', si passionné pour la danse, who, after the death of Prince George of Denmark, waited upon Queen Anne, and advised her to take a quarter, by way of consolation.
Let us pause a while to take breath.
[FORGET-ME-NOT: 'MYOSOTIS AVENSIS.']
FROM THE GERMAN: BY FITZ-GREENE HALLECK.
I.
There is a flower, a lovely flower,
Tinged deep with Faith's unchanging hue;
Pure as the ether in its hour
Of loveliest and serenest blue.
The streamlet's gentle side it seeks,
The silent fount, the shaded grot,
And sweetly to the heart it speaks,
Forget-me-not, forget-me-not.
II.
Mild as the azure of thine eyes,
Soft as the halo-beam above,
In tender whispers still it sighs,
Forget me not, my life, my love!
There where thy last steps turned away,
Wet eyes shall watch the sacred spot,
And this sweet flower be heard to say,
Forget! ah, no! forget-me-not!