Thiers, or Landseer, or Delaroche,--Mrs. Norton, the Misses Berry,
Madame Recamier, and all the brilliant women and famous
foreigners. But why should we desert the pleasant pages of those men,
and the recorded gossip of those women, to be squeezed flat against a
wall, while young Doughface pours oyster gravy down our shirt front,
and Carolina Pettitoes wonders at "Mr. Duesseldorf's" industry?

If intelligent people decline to go, you justly remark, it is their
own fault. Yes, but if they stay away it is very certainly their great
gain. The elderly people are always neglected with us, and nothing
surprises intelligent strangers more, than the tyrannical supremacy of
Young America. But we are not surprised at this neglect. How can we be
if we have our eyes open? When Caroline Pettitoes retreats from the
floor to the sofa, and instead of a "polker" figures at parties as a
matron, do you suppose that "tough old Joes" like ourselves are going
to desert the young Caroline upon the floor, for Madame Pettitoes upon
the sofa? If the pretty young Caroline, with youth, health, freshness,
a fine, budding form, and wreathed in a semi-transparent haze of
flounced and flowered gauze, is so vapid that we prefer to accost her
with our eyes alone, and not with our tongues, is the same Caroline
married into a Madame Pettitoes, and fanning herself upon a sofa,--no
longer particularly fresh, nor young, nor pretty, and no longer
budding but very fully blown,--likely to be fascinating in
conversation? We cannot wonder that the whole connection of Pettitoes,
when advanced to the matron state, is entirely neglected. Proper
homage to age we can all pay at home, to our parents and
grandparents. Proper respect for some persons is best preserved by
avoiding their neighborhood.

And what, think you, is the influence of this extravagant expense and