re,
but still they don't look _exactly_ like Choctaws.

The cab and chaise-men muffled up in their cold-defying great-coats and
woolen comforters, are opening the doors of their several vehicles, out
of which ladies enveloped in cloaks and hoods are dismounting under
cover of umbrellas, held probably by the "best of brothers," but more
probably by gentlemen in no way related to them. In the opera house all
is bustle and commotion. The officials are selling tickets, receiving
tickets, and directing to their places bevies of ladies and gentlemen
bewildered in a maze of passages. The audience is impatiently preparing
itself for a delightful evening's entertainment. The dandies, who are
so unfortunate as not to have accompanied ladies have already brought
themselves up to the attack, and have levelled their opera-glasses on
all the points where they know well-established objects of admiration
are likely to be found. Now and then they bow their recognition in a
reserved inclination, or in a careless smiling way that bespeaks the
freedom of familiar intimacy.

The fast-men are standing at the doors in knots of three and four,
talking over the last trot of Suffolk, or the probable chance of victory
in the next day's dog-fight, and making a few, no doubt _very fast_, but
not very proper allusions to the shoulders of some rather sparingly
habited _belles_. The Cubans in the parquette, who, by the by, during
their sojourn in this country will best preserve their liberty by
remaining north of Mason and Dixon's line, are clearing their voices in
very doubtful Spanish, for those animated bravos, which we must admit
they always administer in the very best taste, both as to time and
quantity. Here and there, some lone young man, desolate in a crowd, who
has seldom before been exposed to the full blaze of the all-discovering
gas light, not exactly knowing what to do with himself, is
endeavouring, with a fictitious indifference, to fill up the vacancies
of attention by smoothing down the stubborn folds of badly selected
white _kids_. Five collegians just escaped from the studious
universities for a high week in town, have established themselves all
together, and commenced a running commentary, carried on chiefly in the
Virginia dialect, on men, women, and things, much to the annoyance of a
very foreign gentleman behind them--so foreign that he is almost
black--who looks stilettos at his cheerful but over-loquacious
neighbours. One you