ess; she descends to her parlour neat,
stiff, and silent; her breakfast is brought in by her free black
footman; she eats her fried ham 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 cetera_; then walks down stairs, 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 papers, and the minikin pins with
which the table is already covered; she also produces from her
basket three ready-made pincushions, four ink-wipers, seven paper
matches, and a paste-board watch-case; these are welcomed with
acclamations, and the youngest lady present deposits them
carefully on shelves, amid a prodigious quantity of similar
articles. She then produces her thimble, and asks for work; it
is presented to her, and the eight ladies all stitch together for
some hours. Their talk is of priests and of missions; of the
profits of their last sale, of their hopes from the next; of the
doubt whether your Mr. This, or young Mr. That should receive the
fruits of it to fit him out for Liberia; of the very ugly bonnet
seen at church on Sabbath morning, of the very handsome preacher
who