Who has not had just this experience, or a similar one, at any Watering-Place? One day you suddenly discover that some certain person has arrived; and when you go to your room to dress for dinner, your boots look splayed--your waistcoats are not the thing--your coat isn't half as handsome as other coats--and you spoil all your cravats in your nervous efforts to tie them exquisitely. You get dressed, however, and descend to dinner, giving yourself a Vivian Grey-ish air--a combination of the coxcomb, the poet, and the politician--and yet wonder why your hands seem so large, and why you do not feel at your ease, although every thing is the same as yesterday, except that Lulu has arrived. And there she sits! So sat Lulu, Herbert's sister, cool in light muslin, as if that sultry summer day she were Undine draped in mist. She had the self-possession, which many children have, and which greatly differs from the elaborate _sang froid_ of elegant manners. There was no haughty reserve, no cold unconsciousness, as if the world were not worth her treading. But when Herbert nodded to me--and I, knowing that she was about to look at me, involuntarily put forward the poet-aspect of Vivian--she turned and looked toward me earnestly and unaffectedly for a few moments, while I played with a sweet-bread, and looked abstracted. It is a pity that we men make such fools of ourselves when we are in the callow state! Lulu turned back and said something to Herbert; of course, it was telling him her first impression of me! Do you think I wished to hear it? She was not tall nor superb: her face was very changeful and singularly interesting. I watched her during dinner, and such were my impressions. If they were wrong, it was the fault of my perceptions. We met upon the piazza after dinner while the beautifully-dressed throng was promenading, and the band was playing. It was an Arcadian moment and scene. "Lulu, this is my friend, Mr. ----, of whom I have spoken to you so often." Herbert remained but a moment. I offered my arm to his sister, and we moved with the throng. The whole world seemed a festival. The day was golden--the music swelled in those long, delicious chords, which imparadise the moment, and make life poetry. In that strain, and with that feeling, our acquaintance commenced. It was Lulu's first summer at a Watering-Place (at least she said so); it was my first, too, at a Watering-Place--but not my first at a flirtation, thought I, loftily. She had all the cordial freshness of a Southern girl, with that geniality of manner which, without being in the least degree familiar, is confiding and friendly, and which to us, reserved and suspicious Northerners, appears the evidence of the complete triumph we have achieved, until we see that it is a general and not a particular manner.