cription of the day's avocations of a Philadelphian lady of the first
class:--

"This lady," she says, "shall be the wife of a senator and a lawyer in
the highest repute and practice. She has a very handsome house, with
white marble steps and door-posts, and a delicate silver knocker and
door-handle; she has very handsome drawing-rooms, very handsomely
furnished (there is a side-board in one of them, but it is very
handsome, and has very handsome decanters and cut-glass water jugs upon
it); she has a very handsome carriage and a very handsome free black
coachman; she is always very handsomely dressed; and, moreover, she is
very handsome herself.

"She rises, and her first hour is spent in the scrupulously nice
arrangement of her dress; she descends to her parlour neat, stiff, and
silent; her breakfast is brought in by her free black footman; she eats
her fried bean and her salt fish, and drinks her coffee in silence,
while her husband reads one newspaper, and puts another under his elbow;
and then, perhaps, she washes the cups and saucers. Her carriage is
ordered at eleven; till that hour she is employed in the pastry-room,
her snow-white apron protecting her mouse-coloured silk. Twenty minutes
before her carriage should appear she retires to her chamber, as she
calls it, shakes, and folds up her still snow-white apron, smooths her
rich dress, and with nice care sets on her elegant bonnet, and all the
handsome _et caetera_; then walks downstairs, just at the moment that her
free black coachman announces to her free black footman that the
carriage waits. She steps into it, and gives the word, "Drive to the
Dorcas Society." Her footman stays at home to clean the knives, but her
coachman can trust his horses while he opens the carriage door, and his
lady not being accustomed to a hand or an arm, gets out very safely
without, though one of her own is occupied by a work basket, and the
other by a large roll of all those indescribable matters which ladies
take as offerings to Dorcas societies. She enters the parlour
appropriated for the meeting, and finds seven other ladies, very like
herself, and takes her place among them; she presents her contribution,
which is accepted with a gentle circular smile, and her parings of
broad-cloth, her ends of ribbon, her gilt paper, and her minikin pins,
are added to the parings of broad-cloth, the ends of ribbon, the gilt
paper, and the minikin pins with which the table is already covere