high dignity and sweet cordiality. She was a majestic figure in spite
of her short stature and increasing curves, for the majesty was
within and her head above a flat back had a lofty poise. She wore her
prematurely white hair in a tall pompadour, and this with the rich
velvets she affected, ample and long, made her look like a French
marquise of the eighteenth century, stepped down from the canvas. The
effect was by no means accidental. Mrs. McLane's grandmother had been
French and she resembled her.

Her hoopskirt was small, but the other women were inclined to the
extreme of the fashion; as they saw it in the Godey's Lady's Book
they or their dressmakers subscribed to. Their handsome gowns spread
widely and the rooms hardly could have seemed to sway and undulate
more if an earthquake had rocked it. The older women wore small
bonnets and cashmere shawls, lace collars and cameos, the younger
fichus and small flat hats above their "waterfalls" or curled
chignons. The husbands had retired with Mr. McLane to the smoking
room, but there were many beaux present, equally expectant when not
too absorbed.

Unlike as a reception of that day was in background and costumes
from the refinements of modern art and taste, it possessed one
contrast that was wholly to its advantage. Its men were gentlemen and
the sons and grandsons of gentlemen. To no one city has there ever
been such an emigration of men of good family as to San Francisco in
the Fifties and Sixties. Ambitious to push ahead in politics or the
professions and appreciating the immediate opportunities of the new
and famous city, or left with an insufficient inheritance
(particularly after the war) and ashamed to work in communities where
no gentleman had ever worked, they had set sail with a few hundreds