Page:Historic towns of the southern states (1900).djvu/114

 routs. We hear the gossip of the playhouse—the first in America—or of the races. The bon mots of the Tuesday Club are told again; the wit flashes at the dinner given in honor of the King's birthday; the defeat of the Pretender, the birth of the Dauphin, the repeal of the Stamp Act, the coming of Washington. Anything would

"Serve as excuse for the glass"

in those

"Very merry, Dancing, drinking, Laughing, quaffing, and unthinking times."

We hear, above the grave tones of the men who are talking of the affairs of state, the clear voices of the women—fair, slender, sweet, in pearls and brocade, singing to the accompaniment of spinet or harpsichord music, as unlike ours as were their faces or their thoughts, and we all but forget that the Past is dead and can come no more, and that these are but echoes and shadows and the ashes of roses.

Behind a long brick wall, gated and sentried, lies the United States Naval Academy, and another world.

"But that," as Hans Andersen says, "is