had a headache, and was very languid.
Joe said Hanny had better not go down; and that Daisy would be all right
to-morrow. So Hanny studied her lessons, and began to read "Vanity Fair"
aloud to grandmother. But grandmother said she didn't care about such a
silly girl as Amelia; and though there were wretched women in the world,
she didn't believe any one ever was quite so scheming and heartless as
Becky.

Then Hanny told her father about the dancing, and the partners she had,
and Mr. Andersen, who was going back to Germany to marry some distant
cousin. Altogether, it was a splendid time, only she felt as if there
had been some kind of a Cinderella transformation; and that she was
safe only as long as she wore short frocks.

A week afterward, Mr. Andersen returned to the city, and Hanny was
invited down to tea at the Jaspers. They had a nice time, only the talk
was not quite so charming as when it was interspersed with dancing.

He was to go to Paris also. And now Louis Napoleon had followed in the
footsteps of his illustrious uncle, and was really Emperor of France.
What a strange, romantic history his had been!

After this, life went on with tolerable regularity. There was plenty of
amusement. Old New York did not suffer. Laura Keene thrilled them with
the "Hunchback," and many another personation. Matilda Heron was doing
some fine work in Milman's "Fazio," and the play of "The Stranger" held
audiences spell-bound. Then there were lectures for the more
sober-minded people; and you heard youngish men who were to be famous
afterward. Spirit-rappings had fallen a trifle into disfavour; and
phrenology was making converts. It was the proper thing to go to
Fowler's and have your head examined, and get a chart, which sort of
settled you until something else came along. Young ladies were going
into Combe's physiology and hygiene and cold bathing. Some very hardy
and courageous women were studying medicine. Emerson was in a certain
way rivalling Carlyle. Wendell Phillips was enchanting the cities with
his silver tongue. There had been Brooke Farm; and Margaret Fuller had
flashed across the world, married her Italian lover, who fought while
she wrote for liberty; and husband, wife, and child had met their tragic
death in very sight of her native land.

People were thinking really great thoughts; and there was a ferment of
moral, transcendental, and aesthetical philosophy. Women met to discuss
them in each other's parlours, p