one another in such queer bonnets?" And now that since then long years
have sped away, and the little critic is, alas! no longer young, haply
her children, looking up at her picture by Sully in a turban and short
waist; may have wondered to hear how in such disguise she too was fatal
to many hearts, and set men by the ears, and was a toast at suppers in
days when the waltz was coming in and the solemn grace of the minuet
lingered in men's manners.

And so it is, that, calling up anew the soft September mornings of which
I would draw a picture before they fade away, with me also, from men's
minds, it is the quaintness of dress which first comes back to me, and I
find myself wondering that in nankeen breeches and swallow-tailed blue
coats with buttons of brass once lived men who, despite gnarled-rimmed
beavers and much wealth of many-folded cravats, loved and were loved as
well and earnestly as we.

I had been brought up in the austere quiet of a small New England town,
where life was sad and manners grave, and when about eighteen served for
a while in the portion of our army then acting in the North. The life of
adventure dissatisfied me with my too quiet home, and when the war ended
I was glad to accept the offer of an uncle in China to enter his
business house. To prepare for this it was decided that I should spend
six months with one of the great East India firms. For this purpose I
came to Philadelphia, and by and by found myself a boarder in an up-town
street, in a curious household ruled over by a lady of the better class
of the people called Friends.

For many days I was a lonely man among the eight or ten people who came
down one by one at early hours to our breakfast-table and ate somewhat
silently and went their several ways. Mostly, we were clerks in the