omething to do. Instances of absolute
idleness are very rare. So, by ten, A. M., all the men betake themselves
to their offices, and there busy themselves about their affairs, after a
fashion, energetic or desultory, till after two o'clock. The dinner hour
varies from three to half-past five. Post-prandial labor is generally
declined; wisely, too, for few American digestions will bear trifling
with; though Nature must have gifted some of my acquaintance with a
marvellous internal mechanism. How, otherwise, could they stand a long
unbroken course of free living, with such infinitesimal correctives of
exercise? The evening is spent after each man's fancy--at the club, or
at one of the many houses where a familiar is certain to meet a welcome,
and more or less of pleasant company. The entertainments are often more
extensive and formal, embracing, of course, music, and such are
invariably wound up by a supper. I have heard certain of our seniors
grow quite pathetic over the abolition of those social, if unsalubrious,
repasts. I wonder at such regrets no longer, if I cannot share them.
There is surely an hilarious informality about these _media-nochi_ that
attaches to no antecedent feast; the freedom of a picnic, without its
manifold inconveniences: as the witching hour draws nearer, the
"brightest eyes that ever have shone" glitter yet more gloriously, till
in their nearer and dearer splendor a Chaldean would forget the stars;
and the "sweetest lips that ever were kissed" sip the creaming Verzenay,
or savor the delicate "olio," with a keener honesty of zest. The
supper-tables are almost always adorned by some of the pretty, quaint
conceits of an artist, whose fame extends far beyond Baltimore. Mr.
Hermann's ice-imitations of all fruits and flowers, are marvellously
vivid and natural: I have never seen them equalled by any continental
_glaciers_.

I have lingered, perhaps, too long over too trifling details; and yet, I
wish I had done my subject more justice. Be it remembered, that I
visited Baltimore at a season of unusual social depression. I do not
speak of the stagnation in commerce, and the ruin of Southern interests
and possessions, from which many have suffered heavy pecuniary loss: the
effects of the war come home to the fair city yet more sharply. For
months past the best part of her _jeunesse doree_ have been fighting--as
only the daintily born and bred _can_ fight, at bitter need--in the van
of Southern armies.