University of Virginia Library

UPPERTENDOM.

[ILLUSTRATION] [Description: 627EAF. Page 040. In-line Illustration. Image of the head and shoulders of an attractive young woman with the caption, "JULIA."]

ELI PERKINS ON SHODDY PEOPLE—HE MOURNS BECAUSE
HE IS NOT RICH.

Last night I made a fashionable call
on a fashionable young lady—not one of
your intellectual young ladies, who takes
pride in brains and literature and travel
and music, but one of our real “swell”
girls, who dotes on good clothes and diamonds
and laces, and who bathes daily in a
bath tub of Caswell and Hazard's cologne;
who keeps a Spanish poodle, dyes her
hair yellow, wears a four-inch Elizabethan
ruffle, and has her face powdered with
real pearl powder, specked with black court-plaster.

My dear Julia sat under the mild light of an opal
shade, fanned herself with a twenty-inch Japanese fan,
and discoursed—oh, so sweetly! By her side sat Eugene
Augustus Livingstone, of the Jockey Club. She told
me everything—how the Browns had sailed for Paris;
how the lace on Mrs. Fuller's dress cost $3,000; how
Mrs. Jones had a new Brewster landaulet; how Miss
Fielding was flirting with Mr. Munson; how all the
girls were going up to Thomas's concerts, and—”

“Is Thomas going to give the Ninth Symphony?” I
asked.

“Oh, yes; he's going to give them all—the ninth
and tenth; and won't they be jolly?”

[ILLUSTRATION] [Description: 627EAF. Page 041. In-line Illustration. Image of a man with a hat and moustache. The caption reads, "EUGENE AGUSTUS."]

“Is he going to give the Symphony in D minor?”

“Oh, nao! not in Deminer, Mr. Perkins, but in Central
Park Garden; too lovely, ain't it?”

“I understand,” I said, “that they are going to have
the `Dead March in Saul.”'

“Why, I didn't know that the dead ever marched
anywhere, Mr. Perkins! How can they? Well, I don't
care how much the dead march in Saul if they don't
get up and march around in Central Park Garden.
I—”

“How did you like the Church Musicals, Mr. Livingstone?”
I asked.

“O, they're beastly—perfectly beastly—haw-a-ble.
They make one so confounded sleepy
that yeou kon't keep awake, yeou kneuw—
dre'ful bore—dre'ful!”

“What book are you reading now, Miss
Julia?” I asked, delighted to be able to converse with
a literary young lady.

“O, I'm running over one of Dumas's—awful bores
though, ain't they? Dre'ful stupid!”

“Shall you read Never Again, Miss Julia?”

“Never again? I should hope so—a good many
times again. How sarcastic you are—perfectly atrocious!”

“Do you read Once a Week?”

“Once a week! Why, I hope I do, Mr. Perkins. I
hope—”

“Perhaps you read Every Saturday, Miss Julia?”

“No, I read Sundays—read novels and society papers
—all about balls and parties—ain't they nice?”

“But, speaking of intellectual feasts, Miss Julia, how
do you like the genial Lamb?”

“O, lamb—the tender lamb—lamb and green peas!
They're too lovely; and sweetbread and asparagus
and—”

“And the philosophical Bacon, on which the hungry
souls of England have fed for almost a century?”

“Yes, that lovely English bacon! don't mention it,
Mr. Perkins! A rasher of that English bacon, with
English breakfast tea, and—”

And so Julia rattled on. I was delighted. I wanted
to stay and talk with Augustus and Julia forever. I
loved to sit at the feet of wisdom and discourse upon
the deep philosophy of hair dyes and pearl powder,
and to roam with Julia through classic shades of pannierdom,
and belt and buckledom.

Eugene Augustus now invited Julia to treat us with
music—“some lovely gem culled from—from what the
Dickens is the opera by—by the fairy-fingered what's-his-name,
you know.”

“Do, Miss Julia, do sing us that divine song about
the moon—do!” pleaded Augustus.

Then Julia flirted up her panniers behind, coquettishly
wiggle-waggled to a Chickering Grand, and sang:

[ILLUSTRATION] [Description: 627EAF. Page 043. In-line Illustration. Image of a man in a suit looking startled. The caption reads, "THEM RAFFELLS!"]

“Beautiful, Miss Julia! Beautiful!!” and we all clapped
our hands.

“Do please sing another verse—it's perfectly divine,
Miss Julia,” said Eugene Augustus.

Then Julia raised her golden (dyed) head, touched
the white ivory with her jeweled fingers, and warbled:

“Beautiful! Just too lovely!!”

As Julia finished the last “theeeeeeee”
her father, who grew up from an office
boy to be a great dry goods merchant,
entered. He'd been out to an auction,
buying some genuine copies of works of
art by the old masters.

“I tell ye'r what, says he, “them Raffells
is good, an' Mikel Angelo he could paint too—
he—”

“Did you buy an Achenbach, Mr. Thompson?” asked
Augustus.

“`Buy an akin' back?' I guess not. I don't want
no akin' backs, nor rheumatism, nor—”

“And was there a Verboeckoven?” I inquired.

“No, sir; there wa'n't no Verboecks hove in—they

ain't a hovin' in Verboecks now. Money is tight an'
paintin's is riz.”

“Ah, did you buy any Church's or Worms?”

“Buy churches and worms! What the devil do I
want to buy churches and worms for? I'm buyin'
works of art, sir. I'm buying—”

“Ah! perhaps you bought some Coles, and may be
an English Whistler?”

“Me buy coals and an English whistler! No, sir;
I'm not a coal dealer. I'm a dry goods man—A. B.
Thompson & Co., dry goods, sir, and I can do my own
whistling, and—

And so Mr. Thompson went on!

But alas! how could I, a poor author, commune
farther with this learned encyclopedia of beautiful calico
and grand old cheese, and pure and immaculate saleratus,
and sharp and pointed needles?—I, who cannot
dance the German or buy a “spiked” team!

Alas! I sigh as the tears roll down my furrowed
cheeks, what profit is it to know the old masters—to
commune with Phidias—to chant the grand old hexameter
of the Iliad, when you cannot buy and own
them? I am a poor, ruined, man. I cannot buy—I
cannot build—I cannot decorate! I can only sit and
weep in sackcloth and ashes, at the shrine of the
beautiful and the true. Eli Doloroso.