o intention of describing fashionable society in the GREAT
EMPORIUM of the WESTERN WORLD. Every body understands that it is on the
best possible footing--grace, ease, high breeding and common sense
being so blended together, that it is exceedingly difficult to analyze
them, or, indeed, to tell which is which. It is this moral fusion that
renders the whole perfect, as the harmony of fine coloring throws a
glow of glory on the pictures of Claude, or, for that matter, on those
of Cole, too. Still, as envious and evil disposed persons have dared to
call in question the elegance, and more especially the retenue of a
Manhattanese rout, I feel myself impelled, if not by that high
sentiment, patriotism, at least by a feeling of gratitude for the great
consideration that is attached to pocket-handkerchiefs, just to declare
that it is all scandal. If I have any fault to find with New York
society, it is on account of its formal and almost priggish quiet--the
female voice being usually quite lost in it--thus leaving a void in the
ear, not to say the heart, that is painful to endure. Could a few young
ladies, too, be persuaded to become a little more prominent, and quit
their mother's apron-strings, it would add vastly to the grouping, and
relieve the stiffness of the "shin-pieces" of formal rows of
dark-looking men, and of the flounces of pretty women. These two slight
faults repaired, New York society might rival that of Paris; especially
in the Chausse d'Autin. More than this I do not wish to say, and less
than this I cannot in honor write, for I have made some of the warmest
and truest-hearted friends in New York that it ever fell to the lot of
a pocket-handkerchief to enjoy.

{salle a manger-salons = dining rooms-parlor; GREAT EMPORIUM [capitals
in original] = New York City; Claude = Claude Lorrain (1600-1682),
French landscape painter; Cole = Thomas Cole (1801-1848), American
landscape painter; rout = evening party; Chausse d'Autin = Chaussee
d'Antin, a fashionable Parisian street and neighborhood}

It has been said that my arrival produced a general buzz. In less than
a minute Eudosia had made her curtsy, and was surrounded, in a corner,
by a bevy of young friends, all silent together, and all dying to see
me. To deny the deep gratification I felt at the encomiums I received,
would be hypocrisy. They went from my borders to my centre--from the
lace to the hem--and from the hem to the minutest fibre of my exquisite
texture.