precocious, full-blown beauty of four signifies that she has
completed her meal--or is "through" her dinner, as she would
express it--by carefully extricating herself from the napkin which
has been tucked around her. Then the waiter, ever attentive to her
movements, draws back the chair on which she is seated, and the
young lady glides to the floor. A little girl in Old England would
scramble down, but little girls in New England never scramble. Her
father and mother, who are no more than her chief ministers, walk
before her out of the saloon, and then she--swims after them. But
swimming is not the proper word. Fishes, in making their way
through the water, assist, or rather impede, their motion with no
dorsal wriggle. No animal taught to move directly by its Creator
adopts a gait so useless, and at the same time so graceless. Many
women, having received their lessons in walking from a less
eligible instructor, do move in this way, and such women this
unfortunate little lady has been instructed to copy. The peculiar
step to which I allude is to be seen often on the boulevards in
Paris. It is to be seen more often in second-rate French towns,
and among fourth-rate French women. Of all signs in women
betokening vulgarity, bad taste, and aptitude to bad morals, it is
the surest. And this is the gait of going which American mothers--
some American mothers I should say--love to teach their daughters!
As a comedy at a hotel it is very delightful, but in private life I
should object to it.

To me Newport could never be a place charming by reason of its own
charms. That it is a very pleasant place when it is full of people
and the people are in spirits and happy, I do not doubt. But then
the visitors would bring, as far as I am concerned, the
pleasantness with them. The coast is not fine. To those who know