Page:Southern Life in Southern Literature.djvu/155

Rh uproar, "talking of races? Mr. Hamilton, Mr. Lane, welcome to my poor house! You will find card tables in the adjoining room." And his bland Excellency passes on.

Space fails us or we might set down for the reader's amusement some of the quiet and pleasant talk of the well-to-do factors and humbler planters and their beautiful wives and daughters. We must pass on; but let us pause a moment yet to hear what this group of magnificently dressed young dames and their gay gallants are saying.

"Really, Mr. Alston, your compliments surpass any which I have received for a very long time," says a fascinating little beauty, in a multiplicity of furbelows and with a small snowstorm on her head,—flirting her fan, all covered with Corydons and Chloes, as she speaks; "what verses did you allude to, when you said that 'Laura was the very image of myself'? I am dying with curiosity to know!"

"Those written by our new poet yonder; have you not heard them?"

"No, sir, upon my word! But the author is—"

"The Earl of Dorset, yonder."

"The Earl of Dorset!"

"Ah, charming Miss Laura! permit the muse to decorate herself with a coronet, and promenade, in powdered wig and ruffles, without questioning her pedigree."

A little laugh greets these petit maltre words.

"Well, sir, the verses," says Laura, with a fatal glance.

The gallant bows low, and draws from his pocket a manuscript, secured with blue ribbon and elegantly written in the round, honest-looking characters of the day.

"Here it is," he says.

And all the beautiful girls who have listened to the colloquy gather around the reader, to drink in the fascinating rimes of the muse, in an earl's coronet and powder.