And busy shapes proclaim the toilet's rites;
From room to room the ready handmaids hie,
Some skilled to wreathe the headdress tastefully,
Or hang the veil, in negligence of shade,
O'er the warm blushes of the youthful maid."

Splendid services of gold and silver plate met the eye in every
direction, on their way to the grand dining room; while, from the
remotest part of the building, the sense of smelling was simultaneously
assailed by several currents of delightful culinary exhalations, which,
like the winds in the cave of AEolus, struggled for egress from their
confined birthplace.

This is one of those occasions on which the Dives of this sumptuous
palace, Mr. Goldrich, intends to celebrate his birthday; and as he can't
tell where he was born, nor can he show any genuine images of his
ancestry, (except that he came down a scion from the great "Anglo-Saxon
race,") he is determined to make amends for this calamity he could not
help, and the want of taste in his father, whoever he was, by spending
an ordinary fortune in the present celebration, and thus combine the
splendors of all the possible past anniversaries of his birth in one
grand, unrivalled celebration to-day.

"And here, at once, the glittering saloon
Bursts on the sight, boundless and bright as noon."

The select music of splendid bands now announced the movements of
guests towards the grand banquet room. In pairs they enter, and
singular; the short procession is now at an end, and the places are
filled up with the scanty number of twoscore guests, male and female.

You would have supposed, from the preparation, that the inhabitants of
the entire city were invited; but no, the exact number was forty,
besides the members of the rich man's family. And this happened not by
accident, or because of the penury or avarice of Mr. Goldrich, but
because in the whole city there were no more than twenty families who
ranked in the sphere of the "upper ten" in which "mine host" moved.
These shining figures, that you can scarcely look at without risk to
your eyes from their jewelry, are the ladies who leave us in doubt which
they love most to exhibit--their charms, or the richness of their
ornaments. Among that bright array of female beauty there is missed the
fair form of one who was, heretofore, an ordinary occupant of an
honorable place at the family table. It was the chair of the
rosy-cheeked Alia that was unoccupied at this splendid circle