Home as Found: Sequel to "Homeward Bound"Cooper, James Fenimore
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Home as Found: Sequel to "Homeward Bound"
Cooper, James Fenimore
United States -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
We shall not stop to dwell on the awful sensations with which Mrs.
Legend heard the first ring at her door, on the eventful night in
question. It was the precursor of the entrance of Miss Annual, as
regular a devotee of letters as ever conned a primer. The meeting was
sentimental and affectionate. Before either had time, however, to
disburthen her mind of one half of its prepared phrases, ring upon
ring proclaimed more company, and the rooms were soon as much
sprinkled with talent, as a modern novel with jests. Among those who
came first, appeared all the foreign corps, for the refreshments
entered as something into the account with them; every blue of the
place, whose social position in the least entitled her to be seen in
such a house, Mrs. Legend belonging quite positively to good society.
The scene that succeeded was very characteristic. A professed genius
does nothing like other people, except in cases that require a
display of talents. In all minor matters he, or she, is _sui
generis_; for sentiment is in constant ebullition in their souls;
this being what is meant by the flow of that part of the human
system.
We might here very well adopt the Homeric method, and call the roll
of heroes and heroines, in what the French would term a _catalogue
raisonnée_; but our limits compel us to be less ambitions, and to
adopt a simpler mode of communicating facts. Among the ladies who now
figured in the drawing-room of Mrs. Legend, besides Miss Annual, were
Miss Monthly, Mrs. Economy, S.R.P., Marion, Longinus, Julietta,
Herodotus, D.O.V.E., and Mrs. Demonstration; besides many others of
less note; together with at least a dozen female Hajjis, whose claims
to appear in such society were pretty much dependent on the fact,
that having seen pictures and statues abroad, they necessarily must
have the means of talking of them at home. The list of men was still
more formidable in numbers, if not in talents. At its head stood
Steadfast Dodge, Esquire, whose fame as a male Hajji had so far
swollen since Mrs Jarvis's _réunion_, that, for the first time in his
life, he now entered one of the better houses of his own country.
Then there were the authors of "Lapis Lazuli," "The Aunts," "The
Reformed," "The Conformed," "The Transformed," and "The Deformed;"
with the editors of "The Hebdomad," "The Night Cap," "The Chrysalis,"
"The Real Maggot," and "The Seek no Further;" as also, "Junius,"
"Junius Brutus," "Lucius Junius Brutus," "Captain Kant," "Florio,"
the 'Author of the History of Billy Linkum Tweedle', the celebrated
Pottawattamie Prophet, "Single Rhyme," a genius who had prudently
rested his fame in verse, on a couplet composed of one line; besides
divers _amateurs_ and _connoisseurs_, Hajjis, who _must_ be men of
talents, as they had acquired all they knew, very much as American
Eclipse gained his laurels on the turf; that is to say, by a free use
of the whip and spur.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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