at least, the wisdom of our ancestors has no chance with
us. There is not a wish of the heart, there is not a yearning of the
affections, that a three-and-sixpenny advertisement in the "Times" will
not evoke a remedy for. You can make love, or a book, or a speech,
by deputy; for every relative you lose, there are fifty kind-hearted
creatures to supply the place; and not only may you travel over half the
globe without more personal exertion than it costs you to go to bed, but
you can be measured either for a wife or a suit of clothes without ever
seeing the lady or the tailor.

The "Hotel Davis," so said the newspaper, "was situated in the most airy
and healthful locality of the Upper Town." No one ever rung the bell of
the hall-door from the first of October to May, but would acknowledge
the truth of the first epithet. The society, for admission to which
the most particular references are required, embraces all that is
intellectual, high-bred, and refined. The table, where preside the
'feast of reason and the flow of soul,' combines the elegance and
delicacy of the French, with the less sophisticated succulence of
English cookery. Intellectual resources,--the humanizing influences
of song and poetry,--the varied pleasures of cultivated and kindred
spirits, which have won for this establishment the epithet of the
Davisian Acropolis, continue to make it the chosen retreat of gentlemen
connected with civil and military pursuits, who are lodged and boarded
for one guinea weekly.

"Receptions every Thursday. Balls, during the winter, on the first
Monday of each month."

Such was one among many--I select it as the shortest--announcements of
this cheap Elysium; and now, two words about Mrs. D. herself. She was a
poor, thin, shrivelled-up little woman, with a rugged, broken-up face,
whose profile looked like a jagged saw. Next to elegance of manner, her
passion was personal appearance,--by which she meant the adventitious
aid of false hair, rouge, and cosmetics; and these she employed with
such ever-varying ingenuity that her complexion changed daily from
classic pallor to Spanish richness, while the angle of incidence of her
eyebrows took in everything, from forty-five degrees to the horizontal.
Her style was "sylph," and so she was gauzy and floating in all her
drapery. A black veil to the back of her head, a filmy, gossamer kind
of scarf across her shoulders, assisted this deception, and when she
crossed the room, gave he