Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. XXVII, August 1852, Vol. V

"The Baltimore ladies may have what you call grace and ease," said she, with the same delicious hauteur, "and the Boston ladies are very 'strong-minded,'" she continued, in a tone intended for consuming satire, the more unhappy that it was clear she could make no claim to either of the qualities – "but the New York women have air," she concluded, and sailed away with what "might be air," said Herbert, who heard her remark, "but certainly very bad air."

Learn from this passage of my experience, beloved reader, you who are for the first time encountering that Sphinx, a New York belle, that she is not terrible. You shall find her irreproachable in tournure, but it is no more exclusively beautiful or admirable, than New York is exclusively the fine city of the country. I am a young man, of course, and inexperienced; but I prefer that lovely languor of the Southern manners, which is expressed in the negligence, and sometimes even grotesqueness of dress, to the vapid superciliousness, which is equally expressed in the coarse grass cloth that imparts the adorable Je ne sais quoi of style. "It is truly amusing," Herbert says, who has been a far traveler, "to see these nice New Yorkers assuming that the whole country outside their city is provincial." A Parisian lady who should affect to treat a Florentine as a provincial, would be exiled by derision from social consideration. Fair dames of New York, I am but an anonymous valedictorian; yet why not make your beauty more beautiful, by that courtesy which is loftier than disdain, and superior to superciliousness?

Ah, well! it was an aromatic evening. Disraeli says that Ferdinand Armine had a Sicilian conversation with Henrietta Temple, in the conservatory. You know how it ended, and they knew how it would end, – they were married. But if Ferdinand had plunged into that abyss of excitement, knowing that however Sicilian his conversation might be, it would all end in a bachelor's quarters, with Henrietta as a lay figure of memory, which he might amuse himself in draping with a myriad rainbow fancies – if he had known this, ought he to have advanced farther in the divine darkness of that prospect? Ought he not to have said, "Dear Miss Temple, my emotions are waxing serious, and I am afraid of them, and will retire."

You will say, "certainly," of course. We all say, "certainly," when we read or talk about it quietly. Young men at Saratoga and Newport say, "certainly," over their cigars. But when the weed is whiffed away, they dress for conquest, and draw upon the Future for the consequences. Unhappily, the Future is perfectly "good," and always settles to the utmost copper.

At least, so Herbert says, and he is older than I am. I only know – in fact, I only cared, that the evening fled away like a sky-lark singing up to the sun at daybreak – (that was a much applauded sentence in my valedictory). I deliberately cut every cable of remorse that might have held me to the "ingenuous course," as it is called, and drove out into the shoreless sea of enjoyment. I revelled in Lulu's beauty, in her grace, in her thousand nameless charms. I was naturally sorry for her. I knew her young affections would "run to waste, and water but the desert." But if a girl will do so! Summer and the midsummer sun shone in a cloudless sky. There was nothing to do but live and love, and Lulu and I did nothing else. Through the motley aspects of Watering-Place existence, our life shot like a golden thread, embroidering it with beauty. We strolled on the piazza at morning and evening. During the forenoon we sat in the parlor, and Lulu worked a bag or a purse, and I sat by her, gossiping that gossip which is evanescent as foam upon champagne – yes, and as odorous and piercing, for the moment it lasts. We only parted to dress for dinner. I relinquished the Vivian Grey style, and returned to my own. Every day Lulu was more exquisitely dressed, and when the band played, after dinner, and the sunlight lay, golden-green, upon the smooth, thick turf, our conversation was inspired by the music, as on the first day, which seemed to me centuries ago, so natural and essential to my life had Lulu become. Toward sunset we drove to the lake. Sometimes in a narrow little wagon, not quite wide enough for two, and in which I sat overdrifted by the azure mist of the dress she wore – nor ever dreaming of the Autumn or the morrow; and sometimes with Herbert and his new horses.

Young America sipping cobblers, and roving about in very loose and immoral coats, voted it "a case." The elderly ladies thought it a "shocking flirtation." The old gentlemen who smoke cigars in the easy chairs under the cool colonnade, watched the course of events through the slow curling clouds of tobacco, and looked at me, when I passed them, as if I were juvenile for a Lothario; while the great dancing, bowling, driving, flirting, and fooling mass of the Saratoga population thought it all natural and highly improper.

It is astonishing to recur to an acquaintance which has become a large and luminous part of your life, and discover that it lasted a week. It is saddening to sit among the withered rose-leaves of a summer, and remember that each rose in its prime seemed the sweetest of roses. The old ladies called it "shocking," and the young ladies sigh that it is "heartless," and the many condemn, while the few wrap themselves in scornful pride at the criminal fickleness of men.

One such I met on a quiet Sunday morning when Lulu had just left me to go and read to her mother.

"You are a vain coxcomb," was the promising prelude of my friend's conversation. But she was a friend, so I did not frown nor play that I was offended.

"Why a coxcomb?"

"Because you are flirting with that girl merely for your own amusement. You know perfectly well that she loves you, and you know equally well that you mean nothing. You are a flippant, shallow Arthur Pendennis – "

"Pas trop vite. If I meet a pleasant person in a pleasant place, and we like each other, I, for my part, will follow the whim of the hour. I will live while I live – provided, always, that I injure no other person in following that plan – and in every fairly supposable case of this kind the game is equal. Good morning."

Now you will say that I was afraid to continue the argument, and that I felt self-convicted of folly. Not at all; but I chanced to see Lulu returning, and I strolled down the piazza to meet her.

She was flushed, and tears were ill-concealed in her eyes. Her mother had apprised her that she was to leave in the morning. It was all over.

I did not dare to trust my tongue, but seized her hand a moment, and then ran for my life – literally for my life. Reaching my room I sat down in my chair again, and stared upon the floor. I loved Lulu more than any woman in the world. Yet I remembered precisely similar occasions before, when I felt as if the sun and life were departing when certain persons left my side, and I therefore could not trust my emotion, and run back again and swear absolute and eternal fidelity. You think I was a great fool, and destitute of feeling, and better not venture any more into general female society. Perhaps so. But it was written upon my consciousness suddenly and dazzlingly, as the mystic words upon Nebuchadnezzar's hall, that this, though sweet and absorbing, was but a summer fancy – offspring of sunshine, flowers, and music – not the permanent reality which all men seek in love. It was one of the characteristic charms of the summer life. It made the weeks a pleasant Masque of Truth – a paraphrase of the poetry of Love. I would not avoid it. I would not fail to sail among the isles of Greece, though but for a summer day – though Memory might forever yearningly revert to that delight – conscious of no dishonor, of no more selfishness than in enjoying a day or a flower – exposed to all the risks to which my partner in the delirious and delicious game was exposed.

We met at dinner. We strolled after dinner, and I felt the trembling of the arm within mine, as we spoke of travel, of Niagara, of Newport, and of parting. "Lulu," said I, "the pleasure of a Watering-Place is the meeting with a thousand friends whom we never saw before, and shall never see again."

That was the way I began.

"We meet here, Lulu, like travelers upon a mountain-top, one coming from the clear, green north, another from the sun-loved south; and we sit together for an hour talking, each of his own, and each story by its strangeness fascinating the other hearer. Then we rise, say farewell, and each pursues his journey alone, yet never forgetting that meeting on the mountain, and the sweet discourse that charmed the hours."

I found myself again delivering valedictory addresses, and to an audience more moved than the first.

Yet who would not have had the day upon the mountain! Who would not once have seen Helen, though he might never see her more? Who would not wish to prove by a thousand-fold experience Shelley's lines —

"True love in this differs from gold to clay,
That to divide is not to take away."

Lulu said nothing, and we walked silently on.

"I hate the very name Watering-Place," said she, at length.

I did not ask her why.

When the full moonlight came, we went to the ball-room. It is the way they treat moonlights at a Watering-Place.

"Yes," said Lulu, "let us die royally, wreathed with flowers."

And she smiled as she said it. Why did she smile? It was just as we parted, and mark the result. The moment I suspected that the flirtation was not all on one side, I discovered – beloved budding Flirt, male or female, of this summer, you will also discover the same thing in similar cases – that I was seriously in love. Now that I fancied there was no reason to blind my eyes to the fact, I stared directly upon it.

We went into the hall. It was a wild and melancholy dance that we danced. There was a frenzy in my movements, for I knew that I was clasping for the last time the woman for whom my admiring and tender compassion was by her revelation of superiority to loving me, suddenly kindled into devotion! She was very beautiful – at least, she was so to me, and I could not but mark a kind of triumph in her air, which did not much perplex, but overwhelmed me. At length she proposed stepping out upon the piazza, and then we walked in the cool moonlight while I poured out to her the overflowing enthusiasm of my passion. Lulu listened patiently, and then she said:

"My good friend (fancy such a beginning in answer to a declaration), you have much to learn. I thought from what you said this afternoon that you were profoundly acquainted with the mystery of Watering-Place life. You remember you delivered a very polished disquisition on the subject to me – to a woman who, you had every reason to suppose, was deeply in love with you. My good sir, a Watering-Place passion, you ought to know, is an affair of sunshine, music, and flowers. We meet upon a mountain-top, and enjoy ourselves, then part with longing and regret."

Here she paused a moment, and my knees smote together.

"You are a very young man, with very much to learn, and if you mean to make the tour of the Watering-Places during this or any summer, you must understand this; and, as Herbert tells me you were a very moving valedictorian this year, this shall be my moving valedictory to you, for I leave to-morrow – in all summer encounters of the heart or head, at any of the leisure resorts where there is nothing to do but to do nothing, never forget that all baggage is at the risk of the owner."

And so saying, Lulu slipped her arm from mine, glided up the stairs into the hall, and the next moment was floating down the room to a fragrant strain of Strauss.

I, young reader, remained a few moments bewildered in the moonlight, and the next morning naturally left Saratoga. I am meditating whether to go to Newport; but I am sure Lulu is there. Let me advise you, meanwhile, to beware, let me urge you to adapt the old proverb to the meridian of a Watering-Place by reversing it – that "whoever goes out to find a kingdom may return an ass."

THE MIDNIGHT MASS.

AN EPISODE IN THE HISTORY OF THE REIGN OF TERROR

About eight o'clock on the night of the 22d of January, 1793, while the Reign of Terror was still at its height in Paris, an old woman descended the rapid eminence in that city, which terminates before the Church of St. Laurent. The snow had fallen so heavily during the whole day, that the sound of footsteps was scarcely audible. The streets were deserted; and the fear that silence naturally inspires, was increased by the general terror which then assailed France. The old woman passed on her way, without perceiving a living soul in the streets; her feeble sight preventing her from observing in the distance, by the lamp-light, several foot passengers, who flitted like shadows over the vast space of the Faubourg, through which she was proceeding. She walked on courageously through the solitude, as if her age were a talisman which could shield her from every calamity. No sooner, however, had she passed the Rue des Morts, than she thought she heard the firm and heavy footsteps of a man walking behind her. It struck her that she had not heard this sound for the first time. Trembling at the idea of being followed, she quickened her pace, in order to confirm her suspicions by the rays of light which proceeded from an adjacent shop. As soon as she had reached it, she abruptly turned her head, and perceived, through the fog, the outline of a human form. This indistinct vision was enough: she shuddered violently the moment she saw it – doubting not that the stranger had followed her from the moment she had quitted home. But the desire to escape from a spy soon renewed her courage, and she quickened her pace, vainly thinking that, by such means, she could escape from a man necessarily much more active than herself.

After running for some minutes, she arrived at a pastry-cook's shop – entered – and sank, rather than sat down, on a chair which stood before the counter. The moment she raised the latch of the door, a woman in the shop looked quickly through the windows toward the street; and, observing the old lady, immediately opened a drawer in the counter, as if to take out something which she had to deliver to her. Not only did the gestures and expression of the young woman show her desire to be quickly relieved of the new-comer, as of a person whom it was not safe to welcome; but she also let slip a few words of impatience at finding the drawer empty. Regardless of the old lady's presence, she unceremoniously quitted the counter, retired to an inner apartment, and called her husband, who at once obeyed the summons.

"Where have you placed the – ?" inquired she, with a mysterious air, glancing toward the visitor, instead of finishing the sentence.

Although the pastry-cook could only perceive the large hood of black silk, ornamented with bows of violet-colored ribbon, which formed the old lady's head-dress, he at once cast a significant look at his wife, as much as to say, "Could you think me careless enough to leave what you ask for, in such a place as the shop!" and then hurriedly disappeared.

Surprised at the silence and immobility of the stranger lady, the young woman approached her; and, on beholding her face, experienced a feeling of compassion – perhaps, we may add, a feeling of curiosity as well.

Although the complexion of the old lady was naturally colorless, like that of one long accustomed to secret austerities, it was easy to see that a recent emotion had cast over it an additional paleness. Her head-dress was so disposed as completely to hide her hair; and thereby to give her face an appearance of religious severity. At the time of which we write, the manners and habits of people of quality were so different from those of the lower classes, that it was easy to identify a person of distinction from outward appearance alone. Accordingly, the pastry-cook's wife at once discovered that the strange visitor was an ex-aristocrat – or, as we should now express it, "a born lady."

"Madame!" she exclaimed, respectfully, forgetting, at the moment, that this, like all other titles, was now proscribed under the Republic.

The old lady made no answer, but fixed her eyes steadfastly on the shop windows, as if they disclosed some object that terrified her.

"What is the matter with you, citizen?" asked the pastry-cook, who made his appearance at this moment, and disturbed her reverie by handing her a small pasteboard box, wrapped up in blue paper.

"Nothing, nothing, my good friends," she replied, softly. While speaking, she looked gratefully at the pastry-cook; then, observing on his head the revolutionary red cap, she abruptly exclaimed: "You are a Republican! you have betrayed me!"

The pastry-cook and his wife indignantly disclaimed the imputation by a gesture. The old lady blushed as she noticed it – perhaps with shame, at having suspected them – perhaps with pleasure, at finding them trustworthy.

"Pardon me," said she, with child-like gentleness, drawing from her pocket a louis d'or. "There," she continued, "there is the stipulated price."

There is a poverty which the poor alone can discover. The pastry-cook and his wife felt the same conviction as they looked at each other – it was perhaps the last louis d'or which the old lady possessed. When she offered the coin her hand trembled: she had gazed upon it with some sorrow, but with no avarice; and yet, in giving it, she seemed to be fully aware that she was making a sacrifice. The shop-keepers, equally moved by pity and interest, began by comforting their consciences with civil words.

"You seem rather poorly, citizen," said the pastry-cook.