University of Virginia Library

DINNER-TIME.

DINNER-TIME.

In the warm afternoons of the early summer, it is
my pleasure to stroll about Washington Square and
along the Fifth Avenue, at the hour when the diners-out
are hurrying to the tables of the wealthy and
refined. I gaze with placid delight upon the cheerful
expanse of white waistcoat that illumes those
streets at that hour, and mark the variety of emotions
that swell beneath all that purity. A man
going out to dine has a singular cheerfulness of aspect.
Except for his gloves, which fit so well, and
which he has carefully buttoned, that he may not
make an awkward pause in the hall of his friend's
house, I am sure he would search his pocket for a
cent to give the wan beggar at the corner. It is
impossible just now, my dear woman; but God
bless you!

It is pleasant to consider that simple suit of black.
If my man be young and only lately cognizant of

the rigors of the social law, he is a little nervous at
being seen in his dress suit—body coat and black
trowsers—before sunset. For in the last days of May
the light lingers long over the freshly leaved trees
in the Square, and lies warm along the Avenue. All
winter the sun has not been permitted to see dress-coats.
They come out only with the stars, and fade
with ghosts, before the dawn. Except, haply, they
be brought homeward before breakfast in an early
twilight of hackney-coach. Now, in the budding
and bursting summer, the sun takes his revenge, and
looks aslant over the tree-tops and the chimneys
upon the most unimpeachable garments. A cat
may look upon a king.

I know my man at a distance. If I am chatting
with the nursery maids around the fountain, I see
him upon the broad walk of Washington Square,
and detect him by the freshness of his movement,
his springy gait. Then the white waistcoat flashes
in the sun.

“Go on, happy youth,” I exclaim aloud, to the
great alarm of the nursery maids, who suppose me
to be an innocent insane person suffered to go at
large, unattended,—“go on, and be happy with fellow
waistcoats over fragrant wines.”

It is hard to describe the pleasure in this amiable
spectacle of a man going out to dine. I, who

am a quiet family man, and take a quiet family cut
at four o'clock; or, when I am detained down town
by a false quantity in my figures, who run into Delmonico's
and seek comfort in a cutlet, am rarely
invited to dinner and have few white waistcoats.
Indeed, my dear Prue tells me that I have but one
in the world, and I often want to confront my eager
young friends as they bound along, and ask abruptly,
“What do you think of a man whom one white
waistcoat suffices?”

By the time I have eaten my modest repast, it is
the hour for the diners-out to appear. If the day is
unusually soft and sunny, I hurry my simple meal a
little, that I may not lose any of my favorite spectacle.
Then I saunter out. If you met me you
would see that I am also clad in black. But black
is my natural color, so that it begets no false theories
concerning my intentions. Nobody, meeting
me in full black, supposes that I am going to dine
out. That sombre hue is professional with me. It
belongs to book-keepers as to clergymen, physicians,
and undertakers. We wear it because we follow
solemn callings. Saving men's bodies and souls, or
keeping the machinery of business well wound, are
such sad professions that it is becoming to drape
dolefully those who adopt them.

I wear a white cravat, too, but nobody supposes

that it is in any danger of being stained by Lafitte.
It is a limp cravat with a craven tie. It has none
of the dazzling dash of the white that my young
friends sport, or, I should say, sported; for the
white cravat is now abandoned to the sombre professions
of which I spoke. My young friends suspect
that the flunkeys of the British nobleman wear
such ties, and they have, therefore, discarded them.
I am sorry to remark, also, an uneasiness, if not
downright skepticism, about the white waistcoat.
Will it extend to shirts, I ask myself with sorrow.

But there is something pleasanter to contemplate
during these quiet strolls of mine, than the
men who are going to dine out, and that is, the
women. They roll in carriages to the happy
houses which they shall honor, and I strain my
eyes in at the carriage window to see their cheerful
faces as they pass. I have already dined; upon
beef and cabbage, probably, if it is boiled day. I
I am not expected at the table to which Aurelia is
hastening, yet no guest there shall enjoy more than
I enjoy,—nor so much, if he considers the meats
the best part of the dinner. The beauty of the
beautiful Aurelia I see and worship as she drives
by. The vision of many beautiful Aurelias driving
to dinner, is the mirage of that pleasant journey
of mine along the avenue. I do not envy the Persian

poets, on those afternoons, nor long to be an
Arabian traveller. For I can walk that street,
finer than any of which the Ispahan architects
dreamed; and I can see sultanas as splendid as the
enthusiastic and exaggerating Orientals describe.

But not only do I see and enjoy Aurelia's beauty.
I delight in her exquisite attire. In these warm
days she does not wear so much as the lightest
shawl. She is clad only in spring sunshine. It
glitters in the soft darkness of her hair. It touches
the diamonds, the opals, the pearls, that cling to
her arms, and neck, and fingers. They flash back
again, and the gorgeous silks glisten, and the light
laces flutter, until the stately Aurelia seems to me,
in tremulous radiance, swimming by.

I doubt whether you who are to have the inexpressible
pleasure of dining with her, and even of
sitting by her side, will enjoy more than I. For
my pleasure is inexpressible, also. And it is in this
greater than yours, that I see all the beautiful ones
who are to dine at various tables, while you only
see your own circle, although that, I will not deny,
is the most desirable of all.

Beside, although my person is not present at
your dinner, my fancy is. I see Aurelia's carriage
stop, and behold white-gloved servants opening
wide doors. There is a brief glimpse of magnificence

for the dull eyes of the loiterers outside;
then the door closes. But my fancy went in with
Aurelia. With her, it looks at the vast mirror, and
surveys her form at length in the Psyche-glass. It
gives the final shake to the skirt, the last flirt to
the embroidered handkerchief, carefully held, and
adjusts the bouquet, complete as a tropic nestling
in orange leaves. It descends with her, and marks
the faint blush upon her cheek at the thought of
her exceeding beauty; the consciousness of the
most beautiful woman, that the most beautiful
woman is entering the room. There is the momentary
hush, the subdued greeting, the quick glance
of the Aurelias who have arrived earlier, and who
perceive in a moment the hopeless perfection of
that attire; the courtly gaze of gentlemen, who
feel the serenity of that beauty. All this my fancy
surveys; my fancy, Aurelia's invisible cavalier.

You approach with hat in hand and the thumb
of your left hand in your waistcoat pocket. You
are polished and cool, and have an irreproachable
repose of manner. There are no improper wrinkles
in your cravat; your shirt-bosom does not bulge;
the trowsers are accurate about your admirable
boot. But you look very stiff and brittle. You
are a little bullied by your unexceptionable shirt-collar,
which interdicts perfect freedom of movement

in your head. You are elegant, undoubtedly,
but it seems as if you might break and fall to
pieces, like a porcelain vase, if you were roughly
shaken.

Now, here, I have the advantage of you. My
fancy quietly surveying the scene, is subject to
none of these embarrassments. My fancy will not
utter commonplaces. That will not say to the
superb lady, who stands with her flowers, incarnate
May, “What a beautiful day, Miss Aurelia.”
That will not feel constrained to say somethings,
when it has nothing to say; nor will it be obliged
to smother all the pleasant things that occur, because
they would be too flattering to express.
My fancy perpetually murmurs in Aurelia's ear,
“Those flowers would not be fair in your hand,
if you yourself were not fairer. That diamond
necklace would be gaudy, if your eyes were not
brighter. That queenly movement would be awkward,
if your soul were not queenlier.”

You could not say such things to aurelia,
although, if you are worthy to dine at her side, they
are the very things you are longing to say. What
insufferable stuff you are talking about the weather,
and the opera, and Alboni's delicious voice, and Newport,
and Saratoga! They are all very pleasant
subjects, but do you suppose Ixion talked Thessalian

politics when he was admitted to dine with
Juno?

I almost begin to pity you, and to believe that a
scarcity of white waistcoats is true wisdom. For
now dinner is announced, and you, O rare felicity,
are to hand down Aurelia. But you run the risk
of tumbling her expansive skirt, and you have to
drop your hat upon a chance chair, and wonder, en
passant, who will wear it home, which is annoying.
My fancy runs no such risk; is not at all solicitous
about its hat, and glides by the side of Aurelia,
stately as she. There! you stumble on the stair,
and are vexed at your own awkwardness, and are
sure you saw the ghost of a smile glimmer along
that superb face at your side. My fancy doesn't
tumble down stairs, and what kind of looks it sees
upon Aurelia's face, are its own secret.

Is it any better, now you are seated at table?
Your companion eats little because she wishes little.
You eat little because you think it is elegant to do
so. It is a shabby, second-hand elegance, like your
brittle behavior. It is just as foolish for you to play
with the meats, when you ought to satisfy your
healthy appetite generously, as it is for you, in the
drawing-room, to affect that cool indifference when
you have real and noble interests.

I grant you that fine manners, if you please, are

a fine art. But is not monotony the destruction of
art? Your manners, O happy Ixion, banqueting
with Juno, are Egyptian. They have no perspective,
no variety. They have no color, no
shading. They are all on a dead level; they
are flat. Now, for you are a man of sense, you
are conscious that those wonderful eyes of Aurelia
see straight through all this net-work of elegant
manners in which you have entangled yourself, and
that consciousness is uncomfortable to you. It is
another trick in the game for me, because those eyes
do not pry into my fancy. How can they, since
Aurelia does not know of my existence?

Unless, indeed, she should remember the first
time I saw her. It was only last year, in May. I
had dined, somewhat hastily, in consideration of
the fine day, and of my confidence that many would
be wending dinnerwards that afternoon. I saw my
Prue comfortably engaged in seating the trowsers
of Adoniram, our eldest boy—an economical care
to which my darling Prue is not unequal, even in
these days and in this town—and then hurried
toward the avenue. It is never much thronged at
that hour. The moment is sacred to dinner. As
I paused at the corner of Twelfth Street, by the
church, you remember, I saw an apple-woman, from
whose stores I determined to finish my dessert,

which had been imperfect at home. But, mindful
of meritorious and economical Prue, I was not the
man to pay exorbitant prices for apples, and while
still haggling with the wrinkled Eve who had
tempted me, I became suddenly aware of a carriage
approaching, and, indeed, already close by. I raised
my eyes, still munching an apple which I held in
one hand, while the other grasped my walking-stick
(true to my instincts of dinner guests, as young women
to a passing wedding or old ones to a funeral),
and beheld Aurelia!

Old in this kind of observation as I am, there was
something so graciously alluring in the look that
she cast upon me, as unconsciously, indeed, as she
would have cast it upon the church, that, fumbling
hastily for my spectacles to enjoy the boon more
fully, I thoughtlessly advanced upon the applestand,
and, in some indescribable manner, tripping,
down we all fell into the street, old woman, apples,
baskets, stand, and I, in promiscuous confusion.
As I struggled there, somewhat bewildered, yet
sufficiently self-possessed to look after the carriage,
I beheld that beautiful woman looking at us
through the back-window (you could not have
done it; the integrity of your shirt-collar would
have interfered,) and smiling pleasantly, so that her
going around the corner was like a gentle sunset,

so seemed she to disappear in her own smiling; or
—if you choose, in view of the apple difficulties—
like a rainbow after a storm.

If the beautiful Aurelia recalls that event, she
may know of my existence; not otherwise. And
even then she knows me only as a funny old gentleman,
who, in his eagerness to look at her, tumbled
over an apple-woman.

My fancy from that moment followed her. How
grateful I was to the wrinkled Eve's extortion, and
to the untoward tumble, since it procured me the
sight of that smile. I took my sweet revenge from
that. For I knew that the beautiful Aurelia entered
the house of her host with beaming eyes, and
my fancy heard her sparkling story. You consider
yourself happy because you are sitting by her and
helping her to a lady-finger, or a macaroon, for
which she smiles. But I was her theme for ten
mortal minutes. She was my bard, my blithe historian.
She was the Homer of my luckless Trojan
fall. She set my mishap to music, in telling it.
Think what it is to have inspired Urania; to have
called a brighter beam into the eyes of Miranda, and
do not think so much of passing Aurelia the mottoes,
my dear young friend.

There was the advantage of not going to that
dinner. Had I been invited, as you were, I should

have pestered Prue about the buttons on my white
waistcoat, instead of leaving her placidly piecing
adolescent trowsers. She would have been flustered,
fearful of being too late, of tumbling the
garment, of soiling it, fearful of offending me in
some way, (admirable woman!) I, in my natural
impatience, might have let drop a thoughtless word,
which would have been a pang in her heart and a
tear in her eye, for weeks afterward.

As I walked nervously up the avenue (for I am
unaccustomed to prandial recreations), I should not
have had that solacing image of quiet Prue, and the
trowsers, as the back-ground in the pictures of the
gay figures I passed, making each, by contrast,
fairer. I should have been wondering what to say
and do at the dinner. I should surely have been very
warm, and yet not have enjoyed the rich, waning
sunlight. Need I tell you that I should not have
stopped for apples, but instead of economically
tumbling into the street with apples and apple-women,
whereby I merely rent my trowsers across
the knee, in a manner that Prue can readily, and at
little cost, repair, I should, beyond peradventure,
have split a new dollar-pair of gloves in the effort
of straining my large hands into them, which would,
also, have caused me additional redness in the face,
and renewed fluttering.

Above all, I should not have seen Aurelia passing
in her carriage, nor would she have smiled at
me, nor charmed my memory with her radiance,
nor the circle at dinner with the sparkling Iliad of
my woes. Then at the table, I should not have sat
by her. You would have had that pleasure; I
should have led out the maiden aunt from the
country, and have talked poultry, when I talked at
all. Aurelia would not have remarked me. Afterward,
in describing the dinner to her virtuous
parents, she would have concluded, “and one old
gentleman, whom I didn't know.”

No, my polished friend, whose elegant repose of
manner I yet greatly commend, I am content, if
you are. How much better it was that I was not
invited to that dinner, but was permitted, by a
kind fate, to furnish a subject for Aurelia's wit.

There is one other advantage in sending your
fancy to dinner, instead of going yourself. It is,
that then the occasion remains wholly fair in your
memory. You, who devote yourself to dining out,
and who are to be daily seen affably sitting down to
such feasts, as I know mainly by hearsay—by the
report of waiters, guests, and others who were
present—you cannot escape the little things that
spoil the picture, and which the fancy does not
see.

For instance, in handing you the potage à la
Bisque, at the very commencement of this dinner
to-day, John, the waiter, who never did such a
thing before, did this time suffer the plate to tip, so
that a little of that rare soup dripped into your lap
—just enough to spoil those trowsers, which is
nothing to you, because you can buy a great many
more trowsers, but which little event is inharmonious
with the fine porcelain dinner service, with
the fragrant wines, the glittering glass, the beautiful
guests, and the mood of mind suggested by all
of these. There is, in fact, if you will pardon a free
use of the vernacular, there is a grease-spot upon
your remembrance of this dinner.

Or, in the same way, and with the same kind of
mental result, you can easily imaging the meats a
little tough; a suspicion of smoke somewhere in
the sauces; too much pepper, perhaps, or too little
salt; or there might be the graver dissonance of
claret not properly attempered, or a choice Rhenish
below the average mark, or the spilling of some of
that Arethusa Madeira, marvellous for its innumerable
circumnavigations of the globe, and for being
as dry as the conversation of the host. These
things are not up to the high level of the dinner; for
wherever Aurelia dines, all accessories should be as
perfect in their kind as she, the principal, is in hers.

That reminds me of a possible dissonance worse
than all. Suppose that soup had trickled down the
unimaginable berthe of Aurelia's dress (since it might
have done so), instead of wasting itself upon your
trowsers! Could even the irreproachable elegance
of your manners have contemplated, unmoved, a
grease-spot upon your remembrance of the peerless
Aurelia?

You smile, of course, and remind me that that
lady's manners are so perfect that, if she drank
poison, she would wipe her mouth after it as gracefully
as ever. How much more then, you say, in
the case of such a slight contretemps as spotting her
dress, would she appear totally unmoved.

So she would, undoubtedly. She would be, and
look, as pure as ever; but, my young friend,
her dress would not. Once, I dropped a pickled
oyster in the lap of my Prue, who wore, on the occasion,
her sea-green silk gown. I did not love my
Prue the less; but there certainly was a very unhandsome
spot upon her dress. And although I
know my Prue to be spotless, yet, whenever I recall
that day, I see her in a spotted gown, and I
would prefer never to have been obliged to think of
her in such a garment.

Can you not make the application to the case,
very likely to happen, of some disfigurement of

that exquisite toilette of Aurelia's? In going down
stairs, for instance, why should not heavy old Mr
Carbuncle, who is coming close behind with Mrs.
Peony, both very eager for dinner, tread upon the
hem of that garment which my lips would grow
pale to kiss? The august Aurelia, yielding to
natural laws, would be drawn suddenly backward—
a very undignified movement—and the dress would
be dilapidated. There would be apologies, and
smiles, and forgiveness, and pinning up the pieces,
nor would there be the faintest feeling of awkwardness
or vexation in Aurelia's mind. But to you,
looking on, and, beneath all that pure show of waistcoat,
cursing old Carbuncle's carelessness, this tearing
of dresses and repair of the toilette is by no
means a poetic and cheerful spectacle. Nay, the
very impatience that it produces in your mind jars
upon the harmony of the moment.

You will respond, with proper scorn, that you
are not so absurdly fastidious as to heed the little
necessary drawbacks of social meetings, and that
you have not much regard for “the harmony of the
occasion” (which phrase I fear you will repeat in a
sneering tone). You will do very right in saying
this; and it is a remark to which I shall give all
the hospitality of my mind, and I do so because I
heartily coincide in it. I hold a man to be very

foolish who will not eat a good dinner because the
table-cloth is not clean, or who cavils at the spots
upon the sun. But still a man who does not apply
his eye to a telescope or some kind of prepared
medium, does not see those spots, while he has just
as much light and heat as he who does.

So it is with me. I walk in the avenue, and
eat all the delightful dinners without seeing the
spots upon the table-cloth, and behold all the beautiful
Aurelias without swearing at old Carbuncle. I
am the guest who, for the small price of invisibility,
drinks only the best wines, and talks only to the
most agreeable people. That is something, I can
tell you, for you might be asked to lead out old Mrs.
Peony. My fancy slips in between you and Aurelia,
sit you never so closely together. It not only hears
what she says, but it perceives what she thinks and
feels. It lies like a bee in her flowery thoughts,
sucking all their honey. If there are unhandsome
or unfeeling guests at table, it will not see them.
It knows only the good and fair. As I stroll in the
fading light and observe the stately houses, my
fancy believes the host equal to his house, and the
courtesy of his wife more agreeable than her conservatory.
It will not believe that the pictures on
the wall and the statues in the corners shame the
guests. It will not allow that they are less than

noble. It hears them speak gently of error, and
warmly of worth. It knows that they commend
heroism and devotion, and reprobate insincerity.
My fancy is convinced that the guests are not only
feasted upon the choicest fruits of every land and
season, but are refreshed by a consciousness of
greater loveliness and grace in human character.

Now you, who actually go to the dinner, may
not entirely agree with the view my fancy takes of
that entertainment. Is it not, therefore, rather
your loss? Or, to put it in another way, ought I
to envy you the discovery that the guests are
shamed by the statues and pictures;—yes, and by
the spoons and forks also, if they should chance
neither to be so genuine nor so useful as those instruments?
And, worse than this, when your
fancy wishes to enjoy the picture which mine forms
of that feast, it cannot do so, because you have
foolishly interpolated the fact between the dinner
and your fancy.

Of course, by this time it is late twilight, and
the spectacle I enjoyed is almost over. But not
quite, for as I return slowly along the streets, the
windows are open, and only a thin haze of lace or
muslin separates me from the Paradise within.

I see the graceful cluster of girls hovering over
the piano, and the quiet groups of the elders in

easy chairs, around little tables. I cannot hear
what is said, nor plainly see the faces. But some
hoyden evening wind, more daring than I, abruptly
parts the cloud to look in, and out comes a gush of
light, music, and fragrance, so that I shrink away
into the dark, that I may not seem, even by chance,
to have invaded that privacy.

Suddenly there is singing. It is Aurelia, who
does not cope with the Italian Prima Donna, nor
sing indifferently to-night, what was sung superbly
last evening at the opera. She has a strange, low,
sweet voice, as if she only sang in the twilight. It
is the balled of “Allan Percy” that she sings.
There is no dainty applause of kid gloves, when it
is ended, but silence follows the singing, like a
tear.

Then you, my young friend, ascend into the
drawing-room, and, after a little graceful gossip,
retire; or you wait, possibly, to hand Aurelia into
her carriage, and to arrange a waltz for to-morrow
evening. She smiles, you bow, and it is over. But
it is not yet over with me. My fancy still follows
her, and, like a prophetic dream, rehearses her destiny.
For, as the carriage rolls away into the darkness
and I return homewards, how can my fancy
help rolling away also, into the dim future, watching
her go down the years?

Upon my way home I see her in a thousand new
situations. My fancy says to me, “The beauty of
this beautiful woman is heaven's stamp upon virtue.
She will be equal to every chance that shall befall
her, and she is so radiant and charming in the circle
of prosperity, only because she has that irresistible
simplicity and fidelity of character, which can also
pluck the sting from adversity. Do you not see,
you wan old book-keeper in faded cravat, that in a
poor man's house this superb Aurelia would be more
stately than sculpture, more beautiful than painting,
and more graceful than the famous vases. Would
her husband regret the opera if she sang `Allan
Percy' to him in the twilight? Would he not feel
richer than the Poets, when his eyes rose from their
jewelled pages, to fall again dazzled by the splendor
of his wife's beauty?”

At this point in my reflections I sometimes run,
rather violently, against a lamp-post, and then proceed
along the street more sedately.

It is yet early when I reach home, where my
Prue awaits me. The children are asleep, and the
trowsers mended. The admirable woman is patient
of my idiosyncrasies, and asks me if I have had a
pleasant walk, and if there were many fine dinners
to-day, as if I had been expected at a dozen tables.
She even asks me if I have seen the beautiful Aurelia

(for there is always some Aurelia,) and inquires
what dress she wore. I respond, and dilate upon
what I have seen. Prue listens, as the children
listen to her fairy tales. We discuss the little
stories that penetrate our retirement, of the great
people who actually dine out. Prue, with fine womanly
instinct, declares it is a shame that Aurelia
should smile for a moment upon—, yes, even
upon you, my friend of the irreproachable manners!

“I know him,” says my simple Prue; “I have
watched his cold courtesy, his insincere devotion.
I have seen him acting in the boxes at the opera,
much more adroitly than the singers upon the stage.
I have read his determination to marry Aurelia; and
I shall not be surprised,” concludes my tender wife,
sadly, “if he wins her at last, by tiring her out, or,
by secluding her by his constant devotion from the
homage of other men, convinces her that she had
better marry him, since it is so dismal to live on
unmarried.”

And so, my friend, at the moment when the
bouquet you ordered is arriving at Aurelia's house,
and she is sitting before the glass while her maid
arranges the last flower in her hair, my darling Prue,
whom you will never hear of, is shedding warm
tears over your probable union, and I am sitting by,

adjusting my cravat and incontinently clearing my
throat.

It is rather a ridiculous business, I allow; yet
you will smile at it tenderly, rather than scornfully,
if you remember that it shows how closely linked
we human creatures are, without knowing it, and
that more hearts than we dream of enjoy our happiness
and share our sorrow.

Thus, I dine at great tables uninvited, and, unknown,
converse with the famous beauties. If
Aurelia is at last engaged, (but who is worthy?)
she will, with even greater care, arrange that wondrous
toilette, will teach that lace a fall more alluring,
those gems a sweeter light. But even then, as
she rolls to dinner in her carriage, glad that she is
fair, not for her own sake nor for the world's, but for
that of a single youth (who, I hope, has not been
smoking at the club all the morning), I, sauntering
upon the sidewalk, see her pass, I pay homage to
her beauty, and her lover can do no more; and if,
perchance, my garments—which must seem quaint
to her, with their shining knees and carefully brushed
elbows; my white cravat, careless, yet prim; my
meditative movement, as I put my stick under my
arm to pare an apple, and not, I hope, this time to
fall into the street,—should remind her, in her spring
of youth, and beauty, and love, that there are age,

and care, and poverty, also; then, perhaps, the good
fortune of the meeting is not wholly mine.

For, O beautiful Aurelia, two of these things, at
least, must come even to you. There will be a time
when you will no longer go out to dinner, or only
very quietly, in the family. I shall be gone then:
but other old book-keepers in white cravats will
inherit my tastes, and saunter, on summer afternoons,
to see what I loved to see.

They will not pause, I fear, in buying apples, to
look at the old lady in venerable cap, who is rolling
by in the carriage. They will worship another
Aurelia. You will not wear diamonds or opals any
more, only one pearl upon your blue-veined finger—
your engagement ring. Grave clergymen and antiquated
beaux will hand you down to dinner, and the
group of polished youth, who gather around the yet
unborn Aurelia of that day, will look at you, sitting
quietly upon the sofa, and say, softly, “She must
have been very handsome in her time.”

All this must be: for consider how few years
since it was your grandmother who was the belle,
by whose side the handsome young men longed to
sit and pass expressive mottoes. Your grandmother
was the Aurelia of a half-century ago, although you
cannot fancy her young. She is indissolubly associated
in your mind with caps and dark dresses. You

can believe Mary Queen of Scots, or Nell Gwyn, or
Cleopatra, to have been young and blooming, although
they belong to old and dead centuries, but
not your grandmother. Think of those who shall
believe the same of you—you, who to-day are the
very flower of youth.

Might I plead with you, Aurelia—I, who would
be too happy to receive one of those graciously
beaming bows that I see you bestow upon young
men, in passing,—I would ask you to bear that
thought with you, always, not to sadden your sunny
smile, but to give it a more subtle grace. Wear in
your summer garland this little leaf of rue. It will
not be the skull at the feast, it will rather be the
tender thoughtfulness in the face of the young
Madonna.

For the years pass like summer clouds, Aurelia,
and the children of yesterday are the wives and
mothers of to-day. Even I do sometimes discover
the mild eyes of my Prue fixed pensively upon my
face, as if searching for the bloom which she remembers
there in the days, long ago, when we were
young. She will never see it there again, any more
than the flowers she held in her hand, in our old
spring rambles. Yet the tear that slowly gathers
as she gazes, is not grief that the bloom has faded
from my cheek, but the sweet consciousness that it

can never fade from my heart; and as her eyes fall
upon her work again, or the children climb her lap
to hear the old fairy tales they already know by
heart, my wife Prue is dearer to me than the sweet-heart
of those days long ago.