Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. I.djvu/313

 dance gaily and gracefully to the piano, in all simplicity and good faith. The children of the house are amiable with one another, they are very fond of one another, and dance together as we used to do in the evenings at home. But they are happier than we were. I generally play an hour for them, either waltzes or quadrilles. Strangers, in the mean time, call and take their leave.

Later, people go out on the piazza, where they walk about, or sit and talk, but I prefer rather quietly to enjoy the fragrant night-air, and to glance through the open doors into the room where the handsome children are skipping about in the joy of youth, Sarah always ideally lovely and graceful, and—without knowing it.

Mr. M., the brother of Mrs. W. H., and the gentleman who came to fetch me the first morning, is a guest here every evening; he is a man of great conversational powers, and tells a story remarkably well.

But with none of them am I so much at home as with my good sensible hostess. And I cannot describe how excellently kind she is to me.

April 13th.—We had last evening a great storm of thunder and lightning, such as I have never seen in Europe, although I remember one June night last year, in Denmark, at Sorö, when the whole atmosphere was as it were in bright flame. But here the flashes of lightning were like glowing streams of lava, and the thunder-claps instantly succeeded them. For the first time in my life I felt a little frightened at a thunder-storm. And yet I enjoyed the wild scene.

In a couple of days I shall go hence on a visit to Mr. Poinsett, the late Minister of War for the United States, as well as their Ambassador to Mexico, and who now lives as a private man on his own plantation. He must be an unusually interesting and amiable man, has seen a great deal of life and of the world, and I am therefore glad to receive an invitation to his house near George