nd the daughter, a
pleasing girl of fourteen, sung to us. She promises to have a good
voice, though it will never equal her cousin's.

On the evening of the 28th we went by invitation to Mr. and Mrs.
King's. He is a lawyer, and they are connected by marriage with the
Neils of Columbus and with the Longworths. The Andersons were there, and
we again had a liberal supply of ices. The following evening, the 29th,
we went to the Andersons, where there was a large party consisting of
the Directors of the Ohio and Mississippi Railway, with whom, by the
bye, I had dined that day at the hotel, there being ten gentlemen and
myself, the only lady, at table. The party at the Andersons was also an
assemblage of some of the beau monde of Cincinnati. The ladies were all
dressed in high silk dresses remarkably well made, and looking as if
they all had come straight from Paris. I never saw a large party of
prettier or better chosen toilettes. The dresses were generally of rich
brocaded silk, but there was nothing to criticise, and all were in
perfect taste. We assembled in a long drawing-room carpeted, and
sufficiently supplied with chairs, but there being neither tables nor
curtains, the room had rather a bare appearance, though it was well
lighted and looked brilliant. Towards ten o'clock we were handed into
the dining-room, where there was a standing supper of oysters,--the
"institution" of oysters as they justly call it,--hot quails, ham, ices,
and most copious supplies of their beloved Catawba champagne, which we
do not love, for it tastes, to our uninitiated palates, little better
than cider. It was served in a large red punch-bowl of Bohemian glass in
the form of Catawba cobbler, which I thought improved it; but between
the wine and the quails, which, from over hospitable kindness, were
forced on poor papa, he awoke the next morning with a bad headache, and
did not get rid of it all day.

The weather during our stay at Cincinnati was so wet that, with the
exception of a drive which Mr. Anderson took us to some little distance
on the heights above, and a long visit which we paid to the school under
Mr. King's auspices, we had little out-door work to occupy us. I once,
however, and papa twice, crossed the Ohio in a steamboat, and took a
walk in the opposite slave state of Kentucky. The view thence of the
town and its fleet of steamboats is very striking. The opposite hills,
with the observatory perched on the highest summit, were