in making an entrance at the seventeenth door by falsely representing
myself as the agent of a dry-goods dealer, with a large box of
patterns under my arm, I found the ladies in close conference with
three dress-makers, studying a fashion-plate with an assiduity worthy
of a better cause. A friend of mine, who has hitherto enjoyed the
privilege of dining every day with six ladies, and has derived from
their society great pleasure and profit, informed me yesterday, with a
tear in each eye, that he had left the house for ever, the
conversation being always turned upon topics with which he is utterly
unacquainted, and conducted in a language which is about as
intelligible to him as the most abstruse Japanese or the most classic
Law-Latin.

If we are so fortunate as to obtain, by any stratagem, admission to
hall or anteroom, in the mansions of our fair friends, our olfactories
are regaled with a fragrance which we instinctively associate with
tailors' shops, and which, I am informed, does in fact arise from the
contact of woollen substances with hot flat-irons. As we advance, our
ears are greeted by the resounding clash of scissors. Entering upon
the field of action, our eyes are dazzled by a thousand fragments of
rich and brilliant hues, and our personal safety endangered by swiftly
flying needles and unsuspected pins. Gossip is at an end, for the
thread must be continually bitten off. Dancing is child's play, a
folly of the past. The piano is converted into a table, or an
ironing-board. No games can be suggested but Thread-my-needle, and
Thimble-rig. No books are at hand but Harper, with the fashion-plate
at the end; the newspapers of the day are cut into uncouth shapes; and
conversation (when conducted in English) hangs the unsuccessful
Bloomer reform upon the gibbet of ridicule.