"O, almost always on the long piazza. It is so clean there,
and we don't like to soil our dresses."

Now I ask if girls could ever get into that state in the
natural course of things! It is the result of bad habits.
They cease to care for things which they ought to like to do,
and they devote themselves to what ought to be only an
incident. People dress in their best without break. They go
to the springs before breakfast in shining raiment, and they
go into the parlor after supper in shining raiment, and it is
shine, shine, shine, all the way between, and a different shine
each time. You may well suppose that I was like an owl among
birds of Paradise, for what little finery I had was in my
(eminently) travelling-trunk: yet, though it was but a dory,
compared with the Noah's arks that drove up every day, I felt
that, if I could only once get inside of it, I could make
things fly to some purpose. Like poor Rabette, I would show
the city that the country too could wear clothes! I never
walked down Broadway without seeing a dozen white trunks,
and every white trunk that I saw I was fully convinced was
mine, if I could only get at it. By and by mine came, and I
blossomed. I arrayed myself for morning, noon, and night, and
everything else that came up, and was, as the poet says,--

"Prodigious in change,
And endless in range,"--

for I would have scorned not to be as good as the best. The
result was, that in three days I touched bottom. But then we
went away, and my reputation was saved. I don't believe