Livres pour Tout

Chapter 59

into bankruptcy." Never were words spoken with more truth. Want of
patronage found all places of rational amusement closed. Societies
for intellectual improvement, one after another, died of poverty.
Fashionable lectures had attendance only when fashionable lecturers
came from the North; and the Northman was sure to regard our taste
through the standard of what he saw before him.

The house of the hostess triumphs, and is corpulent of wealth and
splendor. To-morrow she will feed with the rich crumbs that fall
from her table the starving poor. And although she holds poor virtue
in utter contempt, feeding the poor she regards a large score on the
passport to a better world. A great marble stairway winds its way
upward at the further end of the hall and near it are two small
balconies, one on each side, presenting barricades of millinery
surmounted with the picturesque faces of some two dozen denizens,
who keep up an incessant gabbling, interspersed here and there with
jeers directed at Mr. Soloman. "Who is he seeking to accommodate
to-night?" they inquire, laughing merrily.

The house is full, the hostess has not space for one friend more;
she commands the policemen to close doors. An Alderman is the only
exception to her fiat. "You see," she says, addressing herself to a
courtly individual who has just saluted her with urbane deportment,
"I must preserve the otium cum dignitate of my (did I get it right?)
standing in society. I don't always get these Latin sayings right.
Our Congressmen don't. And, you see, like them, I ain't a Latin
scholar, and may be excused for any little slips. Politics and
larnin' don't get along well together. Speaking of politics, I
confess I rather belong to the Commander and Quabblebum school-I
do!"

At this moment (a tuning of instruments is heard in the
dancing-hall) the tall figure of the accommodation man is seen, in
company of the venerable Judge, passing hurriedly into a room on the
right of the winding stairs before described. "Judge!" he exclaims,