Unrestrained gayeties followed. Groups of young men and maidens chatted
together, and all the gallantries of the times were enacted. Serious
matrons commented on the cake, and told each other high and particular
secrets in the culinary art, which they drew from remote
family-archives. One might have learned in that instructive assembly
how best to keep moths out of blankets,--how to make fritters of Indian
corn undistinguishable from oysters,--how to bring up babies by
hand,--how to mend a cracked teapot,--how to take out grease from a
brocade,--how to reconcile absolute decrees with free will,--how to
make five yards of cloth answer the purpose of six,--and how to put
down the Democratic party. All were busy, earnest, and certain,--just
as a swarm of men and women, old and young, are in 1859.

Miss Prissy was in her glory; every bow of her best cap was alive with
excitement, and she presented to the eyes of the astonished Newport
gentry an animated receipt-book. Some of the information she
communicated, indeed, was so valuable and important that she could not
trust the air with it, but whispered the most important portions in a
confidential tone. Among the crowd, Cerinthy Ann's theological admirer
was observed in deeply reflective attitude; and that high-spirited
young lady added further to his convictions of the total depravity of
the species by vexing and discomposing him in those thousand ways in
which a lively, ill-conditioned young woman will put to rout a serious,
well-disposed young man,--comforting herself with the reflection, that
by-and-by she would repent of all her sins in a lump together.

Vain, transitory splendors! Even this evening, so glorious, so
heart-cheering, so fruitful in instruction and amusement, could not
last forever. Gradually the company broke up; the matrons mounted
soberly on horseback behind their spouses; and Cerinthy consoled her