Hot corn: Life Scenes in New York IllustratedRobinson, Solon
General
Hot corn: Life Scenes in New York Illustrated
Robinson, Solon
New York (N.Y.) -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction; Temperance -- Fiction
Why was she not ashamed of herself? She would have been "mortified to
death" to have her husband know that she was in that room, eating late
suppers and drinking wine, at least, once a week. No wonder she wore a
thick veil. She was yet a little ashamed, for fashion's sake, ashamed to
be seen going into a private room, at ten o'clock, at night, with a
_cavalier servante_. She is on a quick voyage to a shameless harbor, and
will soon arrive there--perhaps, just such a harbor as the home of Elsie
Morgan, where the rats harbored with her in the same cellar; or the home
of little Katy, and her mother in Cow Bay. She would have been ashamed
to have her husband know, that under pretence of going to visit a sick
friend, she had come with _a friend_ to sup in a "private room," in a
"fashionable eating-house." So, too, would that husband have been
ashamed to have his wife know, that under pretence of going to call on
an old friend at the hotel, he was actually, at that moment, enjoying
himself with that friend in the next room, and that that friend was a
friend of his wife, too--the fashionable Mrs. Smith, whose husband is in
California, toiling to earn money, which he remits to her, which she is
using to procure a divorce from him, that she may marry a man she is
already playing the harlot with, and whom she will fool in the same way
she does her present poor simpleton of a husband. In fact, she is
already fooling her paramour, for she is here with another man; and that
man is the husband of a lady, whom she addresses as her "dear friend."
Ah, well! _C'est la vie_ in New York.
"So we sat and talked, and eat and drank, a long time, for time went
merrily on, and at last he poured out the last of the good bottle, and
we were just going to drink it and go, for I said, 'I must go home, I
have a good mile to go yet,' and he said, 'Oh, I will see you safe
home.' So as I was lifting the glass, he caught my arm, and said, 'Stop,
there is a fly in it;' and he took my glass and began to look about for
something to take the fly out.
"'Oh, this will do.' And he took a little folded piece of paper out of
his pocket, and stooped down a little under the table, as though to
throw it on the floor."
"What for?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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