general buzz announced my arrival in the salle a manger-salons. I have
no intention of describing fashionable society in the GREAT
EMPORIUM of the WESTERN WORLD. Every body understands
that it is on the best possible footing--grace, ease, high breeding and
common sense being so blended together, that it is exceedingly difficult
to analyze them, or, indeed, to tell which is which. It is this moral fusion
that renders the whole perfect, as the harmony of fine coloring throws a
glow of glory on the pictures of Claude, or, for that matter, on those of
Cole, too. Still, as envious and evil disposed persons have dared to call
in question the elegance, and more especially the retenue of a
Manhattanese rout, I feel myself impelled, if not by that high sentiment,
patriotism, at least by a feeling of gratitude for the great consideration
that is attached to pocket-handkerchiefs, just to declare that it is all
scandal. If I have any fault to find with New York society, it is on
account of its formal and almost priggish quiet--the female voice being
usually quite lost in it--thus leaving a void in the ear, not to say the heart,
that is painful to endure. Could a few young ladies, too, be persuaded
to become a little more prominent, and quit their mother's apron-strings,
it would add vastly to the grouping, and relieve the stiffness of the "shin-
pieces" of formal rows of dark-looking men, and of the flounces of
pretty women. These two slight faults repaired, New York society
might rival that of Paris; especially in the Chausse d'Autin. More than
this I do not wish to say, and less than this I cannot in honor write, for I
have made some of the warmest and truest-hearted friends in New
York that it ever fell to the lot of a pocket-handkerchief to enjoy.

{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