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

succession of frightful things! Where is all your interest in Kitty Jones?
I've seen you talk to her by the half-hour, and heard you say she is a
charming woman; and now she marries,--and you not only won't go to
the wedding, but you don't ask a word about it.
_Grey._ 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