never be
prevailed upon to present a bill to a gentleman, sir, and as some of the
scions of the best Southern families were still waiting for, or had
been recently dismissed from, a position, the experiment was a pecuniary
failure. Yet the house was of excellent repute and well patronized;
indeed, it was worth something to see old Fauquier sitting at the
head of his own table, in something of his ancestral style, relating
anecdotes of great men now dead and gone, interrupted only by occasional
visits from importunate tradesmen.

Prominent among what Mr. Fauquier called his "little family" was a
black-eyed lady of great powers of fascination, and considerable local
reputation as a flirt. Nevertheless, these social aberrations were amply
condoned by a facile and complacent husband, who looked with a lenient
and even admiring eye upon the little lady's amusement, and to a certain
extent lent a tacit indorsement to her conduct. Nobody minded Hopkinson;
in the blaze of Mrs. Hopkinson's fascinations he was completely lost
sight of. A few married women with unduly sensitive husbands, and
several single ladies of the best and longest standing, reflected
severely on her conduct. The younger men of course admired her, but I
think she got her chief support from old fogies like ourselves. For it
is your quiet, self-conceited, complacent, philosophic, broad-waisted
paterfamilias who, after all, is the one to whom the gay and giddy of
the proverbially impulsive, unselfish sex owe their place in the social
firmament. We are never inclined to be captious; we laugh at as a
folly what our wives and daughters condemn as a fault; OUR "withers are
unwrung," yet we still confess to the fascinations of a pretty face.
We know, bless us, from dear experience, the exact value of one woman's
opinion of another; we want our brilliant little friend to shine; it
is only the moths who will burn their two-penny immature wings in the
flame! And why should they not? Nature has been pleased to supply more
moths than candles! Go to!--give the pretty creature--be she maid, wife,
or widow--a show! And so, my dear sir, while mater-familias bends her
black brows in disgust, we smile our superior little smile, and extend
to Mistress Anonyma our gracious indorsement. And if giddiness is
grateful, or if folly is friendly,--well, of course, we can't help that.
Indeed it rather proves our theory.

I had intended to say something about Hopkinson; but really there