Page:An Epistle to Posterity.djvu/112

Rh Indeed, we made twelve thousand dollars in a month. Mr. Lester Wallack became stage-manager, and ladies and gentlemen worked hard in their various parts at comedy and opera. One of our most beautiful jeunes premiers was Archie Pell, and our play-bills bore this striking record (he left his part unplayed one evening): "Lieutenant Pell obliged to leave for the seat of war." It was all like the ball the night before Waterloo.

A strange carmagnole gayety reigned in society. People were only half sane. They went to the theatre madly, worked seven hours a day at the Sanitary Commission, and then danced all night. Young fops went off to the war and became wonderful soldiers. "The puppies fight well." Leaders of the german became good leaders of men, and one of the best drill-master generals had been a dancing-master.

In our own ranks at the fair, Mrs. Hamilton Fish was our president, Mrs. David Lane vice-president; Mrs. Astor was a diligent worker, Mrs. James B. Colgate very ably led off an auxiliary in Union Square, and a great many earnest women killed themselves by overwork. A most gifted and rare woman, one of our first humorists, Mrs. C. P. Kirkland, fell dead in the fair building one crowded evening; and Mrs. David Dudley Field died at her own house, just after leaving the fair.

One of the most curious epidemics was that of an unbounded generosity. Everybody would give away his or her most treasured possession to be sold for the soldiers. I have always been afraid that many rare editions of books, taken from libraries and committed to these fairs, and many an autograph, were sacrificed. Old silver, too, was given with reckless freedom, to be sadly missed afterwards. And none of them brought what they were worth.