University of Virginia Library

Miss Mary Degai, at the age of sixteen,
Was as pretty a maiden as ever was seen.
Her eyes were deep blue,—
Not that meaningless hue
That one sees on old china, and sometimes on new;
Which really implies
Hers were not saucer eyes,
Though the people declared—and I'm not sure which worser is—
That, though not saucer eyes, they had worked many sorceries.
Her hair was that shade of which poets are fond,
A compromise lustrous 'twixt chestnut and blond.
Her figure was fragile,
Yet springy and agile;
While her clear, pallid skin, so essentially Frenchy,
Neither brunette nor fair,
Just gave her the air
Of a sort of Fifth Avenue Beatrix Cenci.

With a spick and span new, superfine education,
Befitting a maid of such fortunate station,
Miss Mary Degai had just made her début,
From the very select,
Genteel, circumspect
Establishment kept by—it cannot be wrong
Just to mention the name—by one Madame Cancan.
This Madame Cancan was a perfect Parisian,
Her morals infernal, her manners elysian.
She was slender and graceful, and rouged with much art,
A mistress of dumb show, from ogle to start.
Her voice was delightful, her teeth not her own,—
And a cane-bottomed chair when she sat seemed a throne.
In short, this dear, elegant Madame Cancan
Was like a French dinner at some restaurant,—
That is, she completely was made à la carte,
And I think she 'd a truffle instead of a heart.
But then what good rearing she gave to her pupils!
They dressed like those elegant ladies at Goupil's
One sees in the prints just imported from France;
With what marvellous grace did they join in the dance!
No Puritan modesty marred their tournure,—
Being modest is nearly as bad as being poor,—
No shudder attacked them when man laid his hand on
Their waists in the redowa's graceful abandon,
As they swung in that waltz to voluptuous music.
Ah! did we but see
Our sisters so free,
I warrant the sight would make both me and you sick!
Thus no trouble was spared through those young misses' lives
To make them good partners, and—very bad wives.
Receptions were given each week on a Wednesday,—
Which day by the school was entitled “the men's day,”
Because on such date young New York was allowed
To visit en masse that ingenuous crowd,
When they talked threadbare nothings and flat shilly-shally,
Of Gottschalk's mustache, or Signora Vestvali,
Followed up by the thrillingest questions and answers,
Such as—which they liked best, the schottische or the lancers?
No flirting, of course, was permitted. O dear!
If Madame Cancan such a word were to hear,
She would look a whole beltful of dagger-blades at you,
And faint in the style of some favorite statue.
The men were invited alone to impart
To her young protégées that most difficult art
Of conversing with ease; and if ease was the aim
That Madame had in view she was not much to blame,
For I vow she succeeded so well with her shes,
That her school might take rank as a chapel of ease!
Au reste, Madame's pension was quite in the fashion:
None better knew how to put shawl or pin sash on
Than did her young ladies; 't was good as a play
To watch the well-bred and impertinent way
They could enter a room in. Their gait in the street
Was five-barred,—one might say,—'t was so high and complete.
Then their boots were so small, and their stockings so neat,—
Alas! that such dainty and elegant feet
Should be trained à la mode
In that vicious gymnasium, the modern girls' school,
To trip down the road
That, while easy and broad,
Conducts to a place that 's more spacious than cool!

Miss Mary Degai
Was the pet protégée
Of dear Madame Cancan. She was excellent pay,
In her own right an heiress,—a plum at the least,—
A plantation down south and a coal-mine down east,—
I can't state the sum of her fortune in figures,
But I know she had plenty of dollars and niggers.
She was petted and fêted,
And splendidly treated,
Lay abed when she chose, and her school-teachers cheated;
Smuggled candy in school; smoked cigars, and—O, fie!—
Read a great many very queer books on the sly.
She 'd a love affair, too,—quite a sweet episode,—
With a wonderful foreign young Count, who abode
In the opposite dwelling,—a Count Cherami,—
A charming young beau,
Who was très comme il faut,
And who was with our boarding-school Miss bien pris.
So he shot letters on to the roof with an arrow,
And thence they were picked by a provident sparrow,
An amiable housemaid, who thought that the course
Of true love should run smooth,
And had pity on youth,—
So, sooner than leave the fond pair no resource,
Disinterestedly brought all the letters to Mary,
At a dollar apiece,—the beneficent fairy!