"It would be grand to be rich and give parties like them foine birds," a chimney-sweep's wife remarked to the woman next to her.
"Now, don't ye envy them, miss," her companion replied. "Ye never can tell when ye look at a big house what's hiding behind the velvets afore the windows."
The grim Pompeys on the gates seemed to smile at her logic. And yet, after all, the darkness overhead was breaking away, and from out the sombre clouds the sky was spilling pale new-born sunshine over roofs and steeples and despairing streets.
Those who heard of the glories of the Moore ball in their youth are not likely ever to forget it: the music, the supper, the graciousness of host and hostess, and the company. There was a new Astor piano borrowed from the bishop to mingle its fresh voice with that of the tired Moore spinet and the playing of the Park's four violinists. The people who attended it, whose names were as well known then as the pure tones of Trinity's bells,—Le Roys, Rutgers, Gouverneurs, Beekmans, Jays, de Lanceys, Wilcoxes, Livingstons, Kissams, Kortrights, Clarksons, Schermerhorns, Van Pelts, Clarks, Varicks, Waddingtons, Van Santvoorts, Van Nests, Pells, Kembles, Fairlees, and Waters,—they were the great of 1807.
In the largest parlor, where the Orleans sofas are pushed ignominiously against the wall, youthful New York is whirling about to the strains of the Corporal Listnor waltz. Two belles of the evening the room contains,—Maria Mayo, of Virginia and New Jersey, who married General Winfield Scott, and Matilda Hoffman, the love of gay young Washington Irving. A third, and the most remarked of all that large company,—Ellen Conover,—has just passed through the doorway on the arm of Nathaniel Moore. A handsome couple they make,—she in her lace gown and he in dark plum-colored evening clothes. She is smiling, for she does not see the look of misery in his eyes.
"The stars are out, dear; shall we go into the garden and sit under our own little beech-tree?" she asks.
Our beech-tree! How the words sink into his soul and cut like knives!
"No, Ellen," he answers; "the leaves of the tree, so tender and young, are old and seared for us."
"Why, Nathaniel, how strange you talk!" she says. Then she looks into his white face and begins to understand.