F. Colburn (Francis Colburn) Adams
Chapter 61
in fret work, and the cornices interspersed with seraphs in stucco
and gilt. The lights of two massive chandeliers throw a bewitching
refulgence over a scene at once picturesque and mysterious; and from
four tall mirrors secured between the windows, is reflected the
forms and movements of the masquers.
Reader! you have nothing in this democratic country with which to
successfully compare it. And to seek a comparison in the old world,
where vice, as in this city of chivalry, hath a license, serves not
our office.
Madame Flamingo, flanked right and left by twelve colored gentlemen,
who, their collars decorated with white and pink rosettes, officiate
as masters of ceremony, and form a crescent in front of the
thronging procession, steps gradually backward, curtsying and
bowing, and spreading her hands to her guests, after the manner of
my Lord Chamberlain.
Eight colored musicians, (everything is colored here,) perched on a
raised platform covered with maroon-colored plush; at the signal of
a lusty-tongued call-master, strike up a march, to which the motley
throng attempt to keep time. It is martial enough, and discordant
enough for anything but keeping time to.
The plush-covered benches filing along the sides and ends of the
hall are eagerly sought after and occupied by a strange mixture of
lookers on in Vienna. Here the hoary-headed father sits beside a
newly-initiated youth, who is receiving his first lesson of
dissipation. There the grave and chivalric planter sports with the
nice young man, who is cultivating a beard and his way into the
by-ways. A little further on the suspicious looking gambler sits
freely conversing with the man whom a degrading public opinion has
raised to the dignity of the judicial bench. Yonder is seen the man
who has eaten his way into fashionable society, (and by fashionable
society very much caressed in return,) the bosom companion of the
man whose crimes have made him an outcast.
Generous reader! contemplate this grotesque assembly; study the
object Madame Flamingo has in gathering it to her fold. Does it not