successive queer fashion that had come up resplendent and gone down
grotesque in these last thirty years. Mrs. Hobart had no end of old
relics,--bandbaskets packed full of venerable bonnets, that in their
close gradation of change seemed like one individual Indur passing
through a metempsychosis of millinery; nests of old hats that were
odder than the bonnets; swallow-tailed coats; broad-skirted blue ones
with brass buttons; baby waists and basquines; leg-of-mutton sleeves,
balloons, and military; collars inch-wide and collars ell-wide with
ruffles _rayonnantes_; gathers and gores, tunnel-skirts, and
barrel-skirts and paniers. She made monstrous paper dickeys,
and high black stocks, and great bundling neckcloths; the very
pocket-handkerchiefs were as ridiculous as anything, from the
waiter-napkin size of good stout cambric to a quarter-dollar bit of a
middle with a cataract of "chandelier" lace about it. She could tell
everybody how to do their hair, from "flat curls" and "scallops" down
or up to frizzes and chignons; and after we had all filed in slowly,
one by one, and filled up the room, I don't think there ever could
have been a funnier evening!

We had musical nights, and readings. We had a "Mutual Friend"
Thursday; that was Mrs. Ingleside's. Rosamond was the Boofer Lady;
Barbara was Lavvy the Irrepressible; and Miss Pennington herself was
Mrs. Wilfer; Mr. and Mrs. Hobart were the Boffins; and Doctor
Ingleside, with a wooden leg strapped on, dropped into poetry in the
light of a friend; Maria Hendee came in twisting up her back hair, as
Pleasant Riderhood,--Maria Hendee's back hair was splendid; Leslie
looked very sweet and quiet as Lizzie Hexam, and she brought with her
for her secondary that night the very, real little doll's dressmaker
herself,--Maddy Freeman, who has carved brackets, and painted lovely
book-racks and easels and vases and portfolios for almost everybody's