oo
fond of dress, or a 'slave to fashion.'

'Rappacini's daughter' (one of Hawthorne's Mosses) was a morbid
'Lacoontola.' She loved her flowers,--'not wisely, but too well!' She
became a sort of exterminatrix--a strychninus young person! From the
poisonous _arsenic_ embraces of her garden loves, she acquired, you
remember, her fatal, glowing beauty--beauty altogether 'too rich for
use, for earth too dear,' since it consigned the 'party' ensnared by it
to the silent tomb!

'Rappacini's daughter,' indeed! Lovely girl-woman, seated at yonder bay
window (to be accurate, the 'Back Bay window'!), playing with your ten
cherub children; your tropical 'midsummer-night's-dream' beauty recalls
Beatrice (Hawthorne's Beatrice I mean). How many have _you_ slain, my
love? And Madame Grundy echoes: 'Their name is legion!' 'A quick
brunette, well moulded, falcon-eyed'! As in the description of Beatrice,
one is reminded 'of all rich and intense colors'--the purple-black hair,
the crimson cheek, the scarlet lips. And the eyes? ah! gazing into those
wonderful eyes, one forgets the color they wear, in trying to interpret
their language! 'Cleopatra!' who would not be an Antony for thee? _I
would not!_

I have unconsciously interrupted a lady in her morning bath!--the 'stone
lady' of the fountain. She seems to be looking for her Turkish towel,
judging from her anxious expression! Rather a good-looking person--quite
pretty, if only she would go to Summer street and purchase a black silk.
Dress, I fancy, would improve 'her style of beauty.' Poor thing! it's
rather a long walk to take, _a la_ 'Lacoontola'! I must lend her my
waterproof, only she appears already to be water-proved! How she _must_
envy the coloring and the clothes of my beautiful dame of the window!

But my hour is passing away! '_Resurgam_'--as the sun incorrectly
remarked this morning--and go on my way, rejoicing to say 'bon jour' to
all my dear flower friends. And first, the 'Asters'--they always were
rich, you know, from 'John Jacob' down; but this summer, _malgre_ taxes
and curtailment of incomes and go-comes, the family appear in
unprecedented splendor. What gorgeous Organdies! all quilled in the
fashion--but not by Madame Peinot: her cunning right hand, with all its
cunning, ne'er quilled so exquisitely. Those graceful, fragile Petunias
(what a family of sisters!), in their delicate _glaze_ silks (ratherish
_decollete!_), and the Superbia, Empress 'Gladiolus,' in brocad