same to her, all equally worshipful and happy in being printed, black
on white, in the reports of these upper-worldly banquets. But after a
while her sharp intelligence began to distinguish the grades of our
republican aristocracy, and she would skip the long rolls of obscure
guests who figured at the: "coming-out parties" of thrifty shop-keepers
of fashionable ambition, to revel among the genuine swells whose
fathers were shop-keepers. The reports of the battles of the Polo Club
filled her with a sweet intoxication. She knew the names of the
combatants by heart, and had her own opinion as to the comparative
eligibility of Billy Buglass and Tim Blanket, the young men most in
view at that time in the clubs of the metropolis.

Her mind was too much filled with interests of this kind to leave any
great room for her studies. She had pride enough to hold her place in
her classes, and that was all. She learned a little music, a little
drawing, a little Latin, and a little French--the French of
"Stratford-atte-Bowe," for French of Paris was not easy of attainment
at Buffland. This language had an especial charm for her, as it
seemed a connecting link with that elysium of fashion of which her
dreams were full. She once went to the library and asked for "a nice
French book." They gave her "La Petite Fadette." She had read of
George Sand in newspapers, which had called her a "corrupter of
youth." She hurried home with her book, eager to test its corrupting
qualities, and when, with locked doors and infinite labor, she had
managed to read it, she was greatly disappointed at finding in it
nothing to admire and nothing to shudder at. "How could such a smart
woman as that waste her time writing about a lot of peasants, poor as
crows, the whole lot!" was her final indignant comment.

By the time she left the school her life had become almost as solitary