profusion that delights no one--when I look around upon all this rampant
vulgarity in tinsel and Brussels lace, and think how fortunes go, how
men struggle and lose the bloom of their honesty, how women hide in a
smiling pretense, and eye with caustic glances their neighbor's newer
house, diamonds or porcelain, and observe their daughters, such as
these--why, I tremble, and tremble, and this scene to-night, every
'crack' ball this winter, will be, not the pleasant society of men and
women, but--even in this young country--an orgie such as rotting Corinth
saw, a frenzied festival of Rome in its decadence."

There was a sober truth in this bitterness, and we turned away to escape
the sombre thought of the moment. Addressing one of the panting houris
who stood melting in a window, we spoke (and confess how absurdly) of
the Düsseldorf Gallery. It was merely to avoid saying how warm the room
was, and how pleasant the party was, facts upon which we had already
enlarged. "Yes, they are pretty pictures; but la! how long it must have
taken Mr. Düsseldorf to paint them all;" was the reply.

By the Farnesian Hercules! no Roman sylph in her city's decline would
ever have called the sun-god, Mr. Apollo. We hope that houri melted
entirely away in the window; but we certainly did not stay to see.

Passing out toward the supper-room we encountered two young men. "What,
Hal," said one, "_you_ at Mrs. Potiphar's?" It seems that Hal was a
sprig of one of the "old families." "Well, Joe," said Hal, a little
confused, "it _is_ a little strange. The fact is I didn't mean to be
here, but I concluded to compromise by coming, _and not being introduced
to the host_." Hal could come, eat Potiphar's supper, drink his wines,
spoil his carpets, laugh at his fashionable struggles, and affect the
puppyism of a foreign lord, because he disgraced the name of a man who