second to none in beauty, grace
and the higher charm of pure womanhood. Any assembly showed fresh,
bright and gentle faces, with constant pretty ones, and an occasional
marked beauty. There is a peculiar, lithe grace, normal to the South,
that is hard to describe; and, on the whole, even when not beautiful,
there is a _je ne sais quoi_ that renders her women very attractive.

The male element at parties ranged from _passe_ beau to the boy with
the down still on his cheek--ancient bachelors and young husbands alike
had the open sesame. But if a married lady, however young in years or
wifehood, passed the forbidden limits by accident--_Vae victis!_

She was soon made to feel that the sphere of the mated was pantry
or nursery--not the ball-room. To stranger dames--if young and
lively--justice a little less stern was meted; but even they, after a
few offenses, were made to feel how hard is the way of the transgressor.

In a community like Richmond, where every one in the circle had played
together in childhood, or was equally intimate, such a state of things
might readily obtain. In a larger city, never. It spoke volumes for the
purity and simplicity of the society that for years it had gone on
thus, and no necessity for any matronage had been felt. But now the
case was different--a large promiscuous element of military guests was
thrown into it; and it struck all that society must change its
primitive habit.

The village custom still prevailed in this--a gentleman could call for
a lady--take her in his charge alone and without any chaperone--to a
party and bring her back at the "we sma' hours." This was not only
well, as long as the "Jeanette and Jenot" state of society prevailed,
but it told convincingly the whole story of the honest truth of men and
women. But with the sudden influx--when a wolf might so readily have
imitated the guise of the lamb--a slight hedge of form could in no
manner have intimated a necessity for it. Yet Richmond, in the proud
consciousness of her simple purity, disdained all such precautions; and
the informalities of the country town obtained in the salons of the
nation's Capital.

But parties were not the only hospitalities the wanderers received at
the hands of the Virginians. In no state in the country one becomes
domesticated so soon as in the Old Dominion. You may come to any of its
towns a perfect stranger, but with a name known to one prominent
citizen, or fortified with a few letter