em; and furthermore, the dove was evidently, for
some reason, no favorite,--for she said, in a quick, imperative tone,
"Come, come, child! don't fool with that bird,--it's high time we were
dressed and ready,"--and Mary, blushing, as it would seem, even to her
hair, gave a little toss, and sent the bird, like a silver fluttering
cloud, up among the rosy apple-blossoms. And now she and her mother have
gone to their respective little bedrooms for the adjustment of their
toilettes, and while the door is shut and nobody hears us, we shall talk
to you about Mary.

Newport at the present day blooms like a flower-garden with young ladies
of the best _ton_,--lovely girls, hopes of their families, possessed of
amiable tempers and immensely large trunks, and capable of sporting
ninety changes of raiment in thirty days and otherwise rapidly emptying
the purses of distressed fathers, and whom yet travellers and the world
in general look upon as genuine specimens of the kind of girls formed by
American institutions.

We fancy such a one lying in a rustling silk _negligee_, and, amid a
gentle generality of rings, ribbons, puffs, laces, beaux, and
dinner-discussion, reading our humble sketch;--and what favor shall our
poor heroine find in her eyes? For though her mother was a world of
energy and "faculty," in herself considered, and had bestowed on this
one little lone chick all the vigor and all the care and all the
training which would have sufficed for a family of sixteen, there were
no results produced which could be made appreciable in the eyes of such
company. She could not waltz or polk, or speak bad French or sing
Italian songs; but, nevertheless, we must proceed to say what was her
education and what her accomplishments.

Well, then, she could both read and write fluently in the mother-tongue.
She could spin both on the little and the great wheel, and there were
numberless towels, napkins, sheets, and pillow-cases in the household
store that could attest the skill of her pretty fingers. She had worked
several samplers of such rare merit, that they hung framed in different
rooms of the house, exhibiting every variety and style of possible
letter in the best marking-stitch. She was skilful in all sewing and
embroidery, in all shaping and cutting, with a quiet and deft handiness
that constantly surprised her energetic mother, who could not conceive
that so much could be done with so little noise. In fact, in all
household lor