with this one, and then with that one, and
finally with the whole society, not excepting the very flirtable married
ladies;--that is, I mean those whose husbands were simple enough to let
him. Mothers were in a great flutter generally, and not a day passed but
there was a dispute as to which of their daughters he would link his
fortunes with and raise to that state so desirable in the eyes of our
very republican first families--the State-Militant of nobility--"

"I think none the worse of 'em for that," says the old woman, twitching
her wizard-like head in confirmation of her assertion. "My word for it,
Mr. Soloman, to get up in the world, and to be above the common herd, is
the grand ambition of our people; and our State has got the grand
position it now holds before the world through the influence of this
ambition."

"True!--you are right there, my dear friend. You may remember, I have
always said you had the penetration of a statesman, (Mrs. Swiggs makes a
curt bow, as a great gray cat springs into her lap and curls himself
down on her Milton;) and, as I was going on to say of this dashing
Baronet, he played our damsels about in agony, as an old sportsman does
a covey of ducks, wounding more in the head than in the heart, and
finally creating no end of a demand for matrimony. To-day, all the town
was positive, he would marry the beautiful Miss Boggs; to-morrow it was
not so certain that he would not marry the brilliant and
all-accomplished Miss Noggs; and the next day he was certain of marrying
the talented and very wealthy heiress, Miss Robbs. Mrs. Stepfast, highly
esteemed in fashionable society, and the very best gossip-monger in the
city, had confidentially spread it all over the neighborhood that Mr.
Stepfast told her the young Baronet told him (and he verily believed he
was head and ears in love with her!) Miss Robbs was the most lovely
creature he had seen since he left Belgravia. And then he went into a
perfect rhapsody of excitement while praising the poetry of her motion,
the grace with which she performed the smallest offices of the
drawing-room, her queenly figure, her round, alabaster arms, her smooth,
tapering hands, (so chastely set off with two small diamonds, and so
unlike the butchers' wives of this day, who bedazzle themselves all the
day long with cheap jewelry,)--the beautiful swell of her marble bust,
the sweet smile ever playing over her thoughtful face, the regularity of
her Grecian features