rs later, we took London on our way to America, and even
then something of the same necessity was felt. On reaching home, with
dresses fresh from Paris, the same party was only in the _mode_; with
_toilettes_ a little, and but very little, better arranged, it is true,
but in surprising conformity with those of all around them. On visiting
our own little retired mountain village, these Parisian-made dresses were
scarcely the subject of remark to any but to your _connoisseurs_. My
family struck me as being much less peculiar in the streets of C---- than
they had been, a few months before, in the streets of London. All this
must be explained by the activity of the intercourse between France and
America, and by the greater facility of the Americans in submitting to the
despotism of foreign fashions.

Another fact will show you another side of the subject. While at Paris, a
book of travels in America, written by an Englishman (Mr. Vigne), fell
into my hands. The writer, apparently a well-disposed and sensible man,
states that he was dancing _dos-a-dos_ in a _quadrille_, at New York, when
he found, by the embarrassment of the rest of the set, he had done
something wrong. Some one kindly told him that they no longer danced
_dos-a-dos_. In commenting on this trifling circumstance, the writer
ascribes the whole affair to the false delicacy of our women! Unable to
see the connexion between the cause and the effect, I pointed out the
paragraph to one of my family, who was then in the daily practice of
dancing, and that too in Paris itself, the very court of Terpsichore. She
laughed, and told me that the practice of dancing _dos-a-dos had gone out
at Paris a year or two before_, and that doubtless the newer _mode_ had
reached New York before it reached Mr. Vigne! These are trifles, but they
are the trifles that make up the sum of national peculiarities, ignorance
of which leads us into a thousand fruitless and absurd conjectures. In
this little anecdote we learn the great rapidity with which new fashions
penetrate American usages, and the greater ductility of American society
in visible and tangible things, at least; and the heedless manner with
which even those who write in a good spirit of America, jump to their
conclusions. Had Captain Hall, or Mrs. Trollope, encountered this unlucky
_quadrille_, they would probably have found some clever means of imputing
the _nez-a-nez_ tendencies of our dances to the spirit of democracy! The
l