and truest-hearted friends in New York that it ever fell to the lot of a pocket-handkerchief to enjoy. {salle a manger-salons = dining rooms-parlor; GREAT EMPORIUM [capitals in original] = New York City; Claude = Claude Lorrain (1600-1682), French landscape painter; Cole = Thomas Cole (1801-1848), American landscape painter; rout = evening party; Chausse d'Autin = Chaussee d'Antin, a fashionable Parisian street and neighborhood} It has been said that my arrival produced a general buzz. In less than a minute Eudosia had made her curtsy, and was surrounded, in a corner, by a bevy of young friends, all silent together, and all dying to see me. To deny the deep gratification I felt at the encomiums I received, would be hypocrisy. They went from my borders to my centre--from the lace to the hem--and from the hem to the minutest fibre of my exquisite texture. In a word, I was the first hundred-dollar pocket-handkerchief that had then appeared in their circles; and had I been a Polish count, with two sets of moustaches, I could not have been more flattered and "entertained." My fame soon spread through the rooms, as two little apartments, with a door between them that made each an alcove of the other, were called; and even the men, the young ones in particular, began to take an interest in me. This latter interest, it is true, did not descend to the minutiae of trimmings and work, or even of fineness, but the "three figure" had a surprising effect. An elderly lady sent to borrow me for a moment. It was a queer thing to borrow a pocket-handkerchief, some will think; but I was lent to twenty people that night; and while in her hands, I overheard the following little aside, between two young fashionables, who were quite unconscious of the acuteness of the senses of our family. "This must be a rich old chap, this Halfacre, to be able to give his daughter a hundred-dollar pocket-handkerchief, Tom; one might do well to get introduced." "If you'll take my advice, Ned, you'll keep where you are," was the answer. "You've been to the surrogate's office, and have seen the will of old Simonds, and KNOW that he has left his daughter seventy-eight thousand dollars; and, after all, this pocket-handkerchief may be only a sign. I always distrust people who throw out such lures." "Oh, rely on it, there is no sham here; Charley Pray told me of this girl last week, when no one had ever heard of her pocket-handkerchief." "Why don't Charley, then, take her himself? I'm sure, if I had HIS imperial, I could pick and choose among all the second-class heiresses in town." {imperial = wealth (from a Russian gold coin)} "Ay, there's the rub, Tom; one is obliged in our business to put up with the SECOND class. Why can't we aim higher at once, and get such girls as the Burtons, for instance?" "The Burtons have, or have had, a mother." "And haven't all girls mothers? Who ever heard of a man or a woman without a mother!"