Madame Flamingo, flanked right and left by twelve colored gentlemen,
who, their collars decorated with white and pink rosettes, officiate as
masters of ceremony, and form a crescent in front of the thronging
procession, steps gradually backward, curtsying and bowing, and
spreading her hands to her guests, after the manner of my Lord
Chamberlain.
Eight colored musicians, (everything is colored here,) perched on a
raised platform covered with maroon-colored plush; at the signal of a
lusty-tongued call-master, strike up a march, to which the motley
throng attempt to keep time. It is martial enough, and discordant
enough for anything but keeping time to.
The plush-covered benches filing along the sides and ends of the hall
are eagerly sought after and occupied by a strange mixture of lookers
on in Vienna. Here the hoary-headed father sits beside a
newly-initiated youth, who is receiving his first lesson of
dissipation. There the grave and chivalric planter sports with the nice
young man, who is cultivating a beard and his way into the by-ways. A
little further on the suspicious looking gambler sits freely conversing
with the man whom a degrading public opinion has raised to the dignity
of the judicial bench. Yonder is seen the man who has eaten his way
into fashionable society, (and by fashionable society very much
caressed in return,) the bosom companion of the man whose crimes have
made him an outcast.
Generous reader! contemplate this grotesque assembly; study the object
Madame Flamingo has in gathering it to her fold. Does it not present
the accessories to wrong doing? Does it not show that the wrong-doer
and the criminally inclined, too often receive encouragement by the
example of those whose duty it is to protect society? The spread of
crime, alas! for the profession, is too often regarded by the lawyer as
rather a desirable means of increasing his trade.
Quadrille follows quadrille, the waltz succeeds the schottish, the
scene presents one bewildering maze of flaunting gossamers and girating
bodies, now floating sylph-like into the foreground, then whirling
seductively into the shadowy vista, where the joyous laugh dies out in
the din of voices. The excitement has seized upon the head and heart of
the young,—the child who stood trembling between the first and second
downward step finds her reeling brain a captive in this snare set to
seal her ruin.
Now the music ceases, the lusty-tongued call-master stands surveying
what he is pleased to call the oriental splendor of this grotesque
assembly. He doesn’t know who wouldn’t patronize such a house! It
suddenly forms in platoon, and marshalled by slightly-colored masters
of ceremony, promenades in an oblong figure.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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