122 A BALL nOOM, AND A BELLE. 



false glare and glitter to wliicli he had been used in 

 the United States and on the European Continent. 

 WsRls of plain white enamel with the slightest gold 

 moulding, white muslin curtains, plain benches and 

 settees of bamboo around the walls, a profusion of 

 wax lights in cut glass chandeliers, that was all. No 

 ormolu, no marquetry, no velvet, no brocade, no at- 

 tempts in the furniture at the Middle Ages or the re- 

 naissance. But the floor was waxed 'till it was as 

 slippery as ice, the music admirable, for it was flippant, 

 and the assemblage such as no other land can show. 

 But, then, the women — women, mature in youthful 

 beauty, delicate, graceful, and slender of proportion, 

 yet perfect in the rounded symmetry, the soft swell- 

 ing charms of Hebe's lovely womanhood, with eyes, 

 hair, shapes, unrivalled ; diff'erent from all other women ; 

 from the girls, the exquisite frail sylph-like girls of 

 America, with slender swaying willowy shapelyness 

 of form, and colorless, pearly-white complexions, 

 never alas ! or scarcely once in a thousand times, to 

 be developed into the full-blown ripeness of form, or 

 the rich flush of perfect beauty ; but to fade away, too 

 soon, and wither ere their prime half-budded — from 

 the irregular features and angular forms of the women 

 of la belle France, unequalled in the secrets of car- 

 riage and demeanor, in the mysteries of the toilet, in 

 the affectations, coquetries, misauderies, of grace, per- 

 fect in all the artificial, but how deficient in the natu- 

 ral beauties of the sex. 



And the men, the flower of manly power and mas- 

 culine grace, easy of bearing, courteous, calm, self- 

 possessed, and most afiable to those farthest below, 

 because confident of their own position — admirably 

 dressed, yet perfectly unconscious that they are 

 dressed at all, graceful, because grace of carriage is 

 native to the well-made, well-nurtured, the well-born 

 — dancing and dressing and bearing themselves, in a 



