第35章

{salle a manger-salons = dining rooms-parlor; GREAT EMPORIUM[capitals in original] = New York City; Claude = Claude Lorrain (1600-1682), French landscape painter; Cole = Thomas Cole (1801-1848), American landscape painter; rout = evening party; Chausse d'Autin = Chaussee d'Antin, a fashionable Parisian street and neighborhood}

It has been said that my arrival produced a general buzz. In less than a minute Eudosia had made her curtsy, and was surrounded, in a corner, by a bevy of young friends, all silent together, and all dying to see me.

To deny the deep gratification I felt at the encomiums I received, would be hypocrisy. They went from my borders to my centre--from the lace to the hem--and from the hem to the minutest fibre of my exquisite texture. In a word, I was the first hundred-dollar pocket-handkerchief that had then appeared in their circles; and had I been a Polish count, with two sets of moustaches, I could not have been more flattered and "entertained." My fame soon spread through the rooms, as two little apartments, with a door between them that made each an alcove of the other, were called; and even the men, the young ones in particular, began to take an interest in me. This latter interest, it is true, did not descend to the minutiae of trimmings and work, or even of fineness, but the "three figure" had a surprising effect. An elderly lady sent to borrow me for a moment. It was a queer thing to borrow a pocket-handkerchief, some will think; but I was lent to twenty people that night;and while in her hands, I overheard the following little aside, between two young fashionables, who were quite unconscious of the acuteness of the senses of our family.

"This must be a rich old chap, this Halfacre, to be able to give his daughter a hundred-dollar pocket-handkerchief, Tom; one might do well to get introduced.""If you'll take my advice, Ned, you'll keep where you are," was the answer. "You've been to the surrogate's office, and have seen the will of old Simonds, and KNOW that he has left his daughter seventy-eight thousand dollars; and, after all, this pocket-handkerchief may be only a sign. I always distrust people who throw out such lures.""Oh, rely on it, there is no sham here; Charley Pray told me of this girl last week, when no one had ever heard of her pocket-handkerchief.""Why don't Charley, then, take her himself? I'm sure, if I had HISimperial, I could pick and choose among all the second-class heiresses in town."{imperial = wealth (from a Russian gold coin)}

"Ay, there's the rub, Tom; one is obliged in our business to put up with the SECOND class. Why can't we aim higher at once, and get such girls as the Burtons, for instance?""The Burtons have, or have had, a mother.""And haven't all girls mothers? Who ever heard of a man or a woman without a mother!""True, physically; but I mean morally. Now this very Eudosia Halfacre has no more mother, in the last sense, than you have a wet-nurse. She has an old woman to help her make a fool of herself; but, in the way of a mother, she would be better off with a pair of good gum-shoes. Acreature that is just to tell a girl not to wet her feet, and when to cloak and uncloak, and to help tear the check-book out of money, is no more of a mother than old Simonds was of a Solomon, when he made that will which every one of us knows by heart quite as well as he knows the constitution."Here a buzz in the room drew the two young men a little aside, and for a minute I heard nothing but indistinct phrases, in which "removal of deposites," "panic," "General Jackson," and "revolution," were the only words I could fairly understand. Presently, however, the young men dropped back into their former position, and the dialogue proceeded.

{General Jackson... = President Andrew Jackson in 1833 withdrew the federal government deposits from the Bank of the United States, leading to a major financial panic}