American essays -- 19th century; Short stories, American
At the opera, the New York woman taketh the most conspicuous box,
spreadeth out her flounces to their fullest circumference, and
betrayeth a constant and vulgar consciousness that she is in her
go-to-meetin-fixins, by arranging her bracelets and shawl, settling her
rings, and fiddling at her coiffure, and the lace kerchief on her neck.
She also talketh incessantly during the opera, to show that she is not a
novice to be amused by it; and leaveth with much bustle, just before the
last act, for the same reason, and also to display her toilette.
On Sunday morning, the New York woman taketh all the jewelry she can
collect, and in her flashiest silk and bonnet, taketh her velvet-bound,
gilt-clasped prayer-book out for an airing. Arrived at Dives’ church,
she straightway kneeleth and boweth her head; not, as the uninitiated
may suppose, to pray, but privately to arrange her curls; this done, and
raising her head, she sayeth, “we beseech thee to hear us, good Lord!”
while she taketh a minute inventory of the Hon. Mrs. Peters’s Parisian
toilette. After church, she taketh a turn or two in Fifth Avenue, to
display her elaborate dress, and to wonder “why vulgar people don’t
confine themselves to the Bowery.”
THE BOSTON WOMAN.
The Boston woman draweth down her mouth, rolleth up her eyes, foldeth
her hands, and walketh on a crack. She rejoiceth in anatomical and
chemical lectures. She prateth of Macaulay and Carlyle; belongeth to
many and divers reading-classes, and smileth in a chaste, moonlight kind
of way on literary men. She dresseth (to her praise be it spoken)
plainly in the street, and considereth india-rubbers, a straw bonnet,
and a thick shawl, the fittest costume for damp and cloudy weather. She
dresseth her children more for comfort than show, and bringeth them up
also to walk on a crack. She maketh the tour of the Common twice or
three times a day, without regard to the barometer. She goeth to church
twice or three times on Sunday, sandwiched with Bible-classes and
Sabbath-schools. She thinketh London, Vienna, or Paris--fools to Boston;
and the “Boulevards” and “Tuilleries” not to be mentioned with the Frog
Pond and the Common. She is well posted up as to politics--thinketh,
“as Pa does,” and sticketh to it through thunder and lightning. When
asked to take a gentleman’s arm, she hooketh the tip of her little
finger circumspectly on to his male coat-sleeve. She is as prim as a
bolster, as stiff as a ram-rod, as frigid as an icicle, and not even
matrimony with a New Yorker could thaw her.
THE NEW YORK MALE.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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