Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, no. 24 October 1859 | Page 6

You seem to forget, Nelly, that I saw one wedding all through, and, indeed, bore as prominent a part in it as one of my downtrodden sex could aspire to; and as the Frenchman said, who went on an English fox-chase, _"Une fois, c'est assez;_ I am ver' satisfy." The marriage service I can read in ten minutes whenever I need its solace; rich morning-dresses are to be seen by scores in the Academy of Music at every _matinée,_ as garnish to Verdi's music; and as to Miss Kitty Jones, I am sure that she, like all brides, never looked so ill as she did to-day. I would do anything in my power to serve her, and would willingly walk a mile to have half an hour's chat with her; but to-day I could not serve her, nor could she talk with me; so why should I trouble myself about the matter? Had I gone, I should only have seen her flushed and nervous, her poor fresh-caught husband looking foolish and superfluous, and an uncomfortable crowd of over-dressed, ill-dressed people, engaged in analyzing her emotions, estimating the value of her wedding-presents, and criticizing each other's toilettes.
_Mrs.Grey._ You're an unfeeling wretch!
_Grey._ Of course I am. Any woman will break her neck to see two people, for whom she does not care a hair-pin, stand up, one in white and the other in black, and mumble a few words that she knows by heart, and then take position at the end of a room and have "society" paraded up to them by solemn little corporals with white favors, and then file off to the rear for rations of Périgord pie and Champagne.
_Tomes._ Well said, Grey! Here's another of the many ways of wasting life by your embellishment of it.
_Mr. Key._ I don't know precisely what Mr. Tomes means; but as to ill-dressed people, I'm sure that the set you meet at the Jones's are the best-dressed people in town; and I never saw in Paris more splendid toilettes than were there this morning.
_Miss Larches._ Why, to be sure! What can Mr. Grey mean? There was Mrs. Oakum's gray and silver brocade, and Mrs. Cotton's _point-de-Venice_ mantle, and Miss Prime and Miss Messe and Miss Middlings, who always dress exquisitely, and Mrs. Shinnurs Sharcke with that superb India shawl that must have cost two thousand dollars! What could be finer?
_Mrs. Grey._ And then Mrs. Robinson Smith, celebrated as the best-dressed woman in town. Being a connection of the family, and so a sort of hostess, she wore no bonnet; and her dress, of the richest _gros d'Afrique_, had twenty-eight pinked and scalloped flounces, alternately one of white and three of as many graduated tints of green. So elegant and distinguished!
_Grey._ Twenty-eight pinked and scalloped flounces of white and graduated tints of green! With her pale, sodden complexion, she must have looked like an enormous chicken-salad _mayonnaise._
_Mrs. Grey [after a brief pause]._ Why, so she did! You good-for-nothing thing, you've spoiled the prettiest dress I ever saw, for me! It was quite my ideal; and now I never want to see it again.
_Grey._ Your ideal must have been of marvellous beauty, to admit such a comparison,--and your preference most intelligently based, to be swept away by it!
_Tomes._ Come, Grey, be fair. You know that merit has no immunity from ridicule.
_Grey._ True; but no less true that ridicule does no real harm to merit. If this Mrs. Robinson Crusoe's gown had been truly beautiful, my ridiculous comparison could not have so entirely disenchanted my wife with it;--she, mind you, being supposed (for the sake of our argument only) to be a woman of sense and taste.
_Mrs. Grey._ Accept my profoundest and most grateful curtsy,--on credit. It's too much trouble to rise and make it; and, to confess the truth, I can't; my foot has caught in my hoop. Help me, Laura.
_[Disentanglement,--from which the gentlemen avert modest eyes, laughing the while.]_
_Grey._ I do assure you, Nelly, that, until you leave off that monstrosity of steel and cordage, your sense and taste, so far as costume is concerned, must be taken on credit, as well as your curtsies.
_Mrs. Grey._ Leave off my hoop? Would you have me look like a fright?--as slinky as if I had been drawn through a key-hole?
_Miss Larches._ Leave off her hoop?
_Mr. Key._ Be seen without a hoop? Why, what a guy a woman would look without a hoop! I suppose they do take them off at certain times, but then they are not visible to the naked eye.
_Tomes._ Yes, Grey,--why take off her hoop? I don't care, you know, to have hoops worn. But worn or not worn, what difference does it make?
Grey. All against me?--a fair representation of the general feeling on the momentous subject at this moment, I suppose. But