THE OAKLAND MEETING. 255 



Gen. Atkinson, Major Stewart, and Capt. Alexander, of tlie 

 army, Judge Woolley, Gov. Poindexter, Judge Rowan, the 

 Hon. Messrs. Menifee, Allan, Letcher, Hardin, Graves, Hawes, 

 etc. Among the guests of the Club, well known to the sporting 

 world, we noticed J. S. Skinner, Esq., of Baltimore, W. M. 

 Anderson, Esq., of Ohio, Col. C. F. M. ISToland, of Arkansas, the 

 Messrs. Kenner, Mr. Slidell, Mr. Parker, and Mr. Beasley, of 

 Louisiana, Mr. McCargo, Mr. Beasley, and Capt. Bacon of Yir- 

 ginia, Mr. Geo. Cheatham, of Tenn., Maj. Fleming, of Alabama, 

 and a great number more whose names have escaped us. 



Good breeding forbids an enumeration of the distinguished 

 throng of belles. The young miss just from the trammels of 

 school, flush with joy and fears, the budding, blooming girl of 

 sweet sixteen, the more stately and elegant full-blown woman, 

 the dark-eyed Southerner, with her brown complexion and 

 matchless form, the blue-eyed Northerner with her dimpled 

 cheek and fair and spotless beauty, were gathered here in one 

 lustrous galaxy. The gentlemen were unmatched for variety ; 

 the Bar, the Bench, the Senate, and the Press, the Army and 

 the Navy, and all the et ceteras that pleasure or curiosity 

 attracted, were here represented. 



We are very much tempted to essay to describe a few of 

 these radiant belles — had kind Heaven made us a poet, like 

 Prentice, we would immortalize them ; as we are only a proser, 

 we can merely detail them. If any demand by what right we 

 allude so pointedly to them, surely we may ask what right they 

 have to be so beautiful ? There was one with a form of perfect 

 symmetry, and a countenance not only beautiful, but entirely 

 intellectual ; like Halleck's Fanny, she may have been " younger 

 once than she is now," but she is, and will ever be, " a thing to 

 bless — all full of life and loveliness." With a purely Grecian 

 bust and classic head, and with an eye as dark as the absence 

 of all light, beaming with a lustre that eclipses all, her figure 

 varied itself into every grace that can belong either to rest oi 

 motion. And there was a reigning belle, in the spring-time of 

 her youth and beauty, with a face beaming with perfect happi- 

 ness ; it was like a " star-lit lake curling its lips into ripples in 

 some stream of delight, as the west-wind salutes them with its 

 balmy breath, and distui-bs their placid slumber." It was the 



