gave my attention entirely
to the self-improvement necessary to my appearance before his highness
as a representative character on whom the eyes of all Sprucehill were
fixed. I would say the world--only for the modest consciousness that
comes over me when I think of myself as a genius.

VII.

THE FRENCH DRESS-MAKER.

Alpaca does make a first-class dress for our social gatherings and
literary circles in Sprucehill, and when puffed out behind, and trimmed
promiscuously with flutings, it sometimes has a sumptuous appearance
elsewhere; but for a ball, in which one aims to dance with a great grand
Archduke of all the Russias--excuse me for saying it, but alpaca is not
quite the thing. Doubtful of my own imperfect judgment, I asked a
fashionable dress-maker in the Third Avenue, who had "Madame" spelt with
an E on her tin sign at the door, and she said: "It wasn't the thing for
a lady entirely, by no manner of means," and her tongue had a rich roll
to it, which satisfied me that Ireland had sympathized with France in
her troubles, to the extent of getting the language a little mixed.

"No," says she, a leaning both elbows on her counter, and a looking at
me from head to foot. "Madame should have a _robe de_ silk, very
complete, with flowers in her hair entirely, and an overskirt to the
fore, garnitured with Limerick point."

"An overskirt before," says I, lifting both hands, satchel and all.
"Why, every skirt that I've seen in the street, or anywhere else, was
puckered and bunched up behind," says I. "Excuse me, but I really
couldn't think of wearing 'em in any other way."

The French dress-maker--I know she was French by the letter E after
Madam, and because the sign said she was from Paris. Well, she colored
up, and looked every which way at first, but then she gave a skimping
laugh, and said that I didn't understand French. I--I didn't understand
French! I who had studied "French without a Master" as a speciality,
with the most intelligent member of our circle, and conversed in the
language as directed by that excellent book so fluently that the
pronunciation sounded almost like English nipped off a little! This was
too much.

The clear grit, which lies at the bottom of every New England woman's
heart, riled up in mine when that cherished accomplishment was cast into
disrepute.

"Madame," says I, putting a keen emphasis on that E, "I came here to
inquire about the most fashionable way of making a dress, n