Page:An Epistle to Posterity.djvu/72

Rh the oath to the sturdy little general. Judge Taney looked like the recently deceased Cardinal Manning.

But the ball! That was the great expectation. We went with ten thousand others to a sort of shed — a large wooden barracks — and spermaceti rained down on our bare shoulders in a white snow-storm. One of our gentlemen attendants, looking at his coat, said: "Spermaceti is very expensive. I have paid ten dollars for less than a pound." However, we enjoyed the crowd, the dance, and the novelty. Had the grippe been the fashion I should have died then and there, and you would have been spared these rambling recollections. But we never seemed to take cold in those days. Washington was cold and dreary in winter then; the houses were insufficiently heated, the hotels abominable.

The belles of that ball — how differently they were dressed from those of to-day! Falling ringlets, or the hair in bandeaux put under the ears; a low-cut gown with a berthe across the shoulders; a plain skirt or one with two lace flounces; a rose or a bow in front of the corsage; perhaps a pearl necklace; white kid gloves buttoning at the wrist with one button.

A few ladies wore white feathers. I think Mrs. Bliss, the delightful daughter of President Taylor, wore a red velvet dress and one long feather in her hair. She was always lovely and well apparelled. Very few ladies wore jewelry. I remember Madame Bodisco was famous then with a Russian head-dress full of diamonds. The wife of the English Minister, Lady Bulwer, wore handsome diamonds, but American women had not then adopted coronets. Nor was there anything like the display so common now of handsome jewelry. The young girls were very simply dressed, excepting some from