Sat stitching all the blessed day. So we are to go to _Philadelphia_ before _Boston_. I'm sorry. The H----s will be disappointed, and I shall get no riding, _che seccatura!_ At five dressed, and went to the ----, where we were to dine. This is one of the first houses here, so I conclude that I am to consider what I see as a tolerable sample of the ways and manners of being, doing, and suffering of the _best society_ in New York. There were about twenty people; the women were in a sort of French demi-toilette, with bare necks, and long sleeves, heads frizzed out after the very last _Petit Courier_, and thread net handkerchiefs and capes; the whole of which, to my English eye, appeared a strange marrying of incongruities. The younger daughter of our host is beautiful; a young and brilliant likeness of Ellen Tree, with more refinement, and a smile that was, not to say a ray, but a whole focus of sun rays, a perfect blaze of light; she was much taken up with a youth, to whom, my neighbour at dinner informed me, she was engaged. * * * * * The women here, like those of most warm climates, ripen very early, and decay proportionably soon. They are, generally speaking, pretty, with good complexions, and an air of freshness and brilliancy, but this, I am told, is very evanescent; and whereas, in England, a woman is in the full bloom of health and beauty from twenty to five-and-thirty, here they scarcely reach the first period without being faded and looking old.[15] They marry very young, and this is another reason why age comes prematurely upon them. There was a fair young thing at dinner to-day who did not look above seventeen, and she was a wife. As for their figures, like those of French women, they are too well dressed for one to judge exactly what they are really like: they are, for the most part, short and slight, with remarkably pretty feet and ankles; but there's too much pelerine and petticoat, and "de quoi" of every sort, to guess any thing more. * * * * * * * * * *