ully neglected. She has had
the best masters, who have taught her nothing. Like all other American
girls, she plays on the piano, but does not play the piano--you will
please notice this subtle but suggestive distinction. She has picked up
a smattering of French, partly because it is a fashionable
accomplishment, and partly because she intends to marry; but I will not
yet break your heart by announcing her matrimonial intentions. Compared
with an English or French girl of the same age, she has many and grave
deficiencies; but she atones for them by a wonderful tact and cleverness,
which blind you to all her faults and lend a new grace to all her
virtues.

"Truth to say, the admirers of Miss Flora, whose name is Legion, give her
the credit for all her own virtues, and blame her father and mother, and
the system, for all her faults. Born, as we have said, in a
boarding-house, left entirely in charge of the nurse-maid, educated at a
fashionable day-school, brought into society before fifteen, living in
the whirl, the bustle, the luxury, and the unhomeliness of a hotel, what
could you expect of Miss Flora but that she should be, at seventeen years
of age, a butterfly in her habits, a clever dunce as regards solid
knowledge, and a premature woman of the world in her tastes and manners?
The apartments which the Briggs family occupy at the Fifth Avenue Hotel
are magnificently decorated and furnished, but they do not constitute a
home. Several times Mr. Briggs has offered to purchase a house in a
fashionable thoroughfare; but his wife objects to the trouble of managing
unruly servants, and terrifies Mr. Briggs out of the notion by stories of
burglars admitted, and plate stolen, and families murdered in their beds,
through the connivance of the domestics. What more can any one desire
than the Briggs family obtain at the hotel for a fixed sum per week, and
a liberal margin for extras? The apartments are ample and comfortable;
the _cuisine_ and the wines are irreproachable; there is a small table
reserved for them, to which they can invite whom they choose; an immense
staff of servants obey their slightest wish; their carriages, kept at a
neighboring livery stable, can be sent for at any moment; they are as
secluded in their own rooms as if they lived in another street, so far as
the family in the next _suite_ is concerned; they are certain to meet
everybody, and can choose their own company; the spacious hotel parlors
are