re till tea-time; and there are six long hours to that.
If we had only a few new novels to pass the time! I cannot imagine
why Cooper is so lazy. Only one book in a year! What if you were to
begin to write, sister? I have no doubt you would succeed as well as
Mrs Mitchell. Bulwer is so fantastical; and even Walter Scott is
getting dull."

"Alas, Howard!" sighed Margaret, looking to me for sympathy with her
sorrows.

"Patience, dear Margaret," said I. "If possible, I will help you to
get rid of the old fellow. At any rate, I will try."

Rat-tat-tat at the house door. Arthurine put up her finger to enjoin
silence, and listened. Another loud knock. "A visit!" exclaimed she
with sparkling eyes. "Ha! ladies; I hear the rustle of their gowns."
And as she spoke the door opened, and the Misses Pearce came swimming
into the room, in all the splendour of violet-coloured silks, covered
with feathers, lace, and embroideries, and bringing with them an
atmosphere of perfume.

The man who has the good fortune to see our New York belles in their
morning or home attire, must have a heart made of quartz or granite
if he resists their attractions. Their graceful forms, their
intellectual and somewhat languishing expression of countenance,
their bright and beaming eyes, their slender figures, which make one
inclined to seize and hold them lest the wind should blow them away,
their beautifully delicate hands and feet, compose a sum of
attraction perfectly irresistible. The Boston ladies are perhaps
better informed, and their features are usually more regular; but
they have something Yankeeish about them, which I could never fancy,
and, moreover, they are dreadful blue-stockings. The fair
Philadelphians are rounder, more elastic, more Hebe-like, and
unapproachable in the article of small-talk; but it is amongst the
beauties of New York that romance writers should seek for their
Julias and Alices. I am certain that if Cooper had made their
acquaintance whilst writing his books, he would have torn up his
manuscripts, and painted his heroines after a less wooden fashion. He
can only have seen them on the Battery or in Broadway, where they are
so buried and enveloped in finery that it is impossible to guess what
they are really like. The two young ladies who had just entered the
room, were shining examples of that system of over-dressing. They
seemed to have put on at one time the three or four dresses worn in
the course of the day by a Lo