Authors, American -- 19th century -- Biography; Leland, Charles Godfrey, 1824-1903
A not unfrequent visitor at our house in Philadelphia was our near
neighbour, Henry C. Carey, the distinguished scholar and writer on
political economy, who had been so extensively robbed of ideas by
Bastiat, and who retook his own, not without inflicting punishment. He
was a handsome, black-eyed, white-haired man, with a very piercing
glance. During the war, when men were sad and dull, and indeed till his
death, Mr. Carey's one glorious and friendly extravagance was to assemble
every Sunday afternoon all his intimates, including any distinguished
strangers, at his house, round a table, in rooms magnificently hung with
pictures, and give everybody, _ad libitum_, hock which cost him sixteen
shillings a bottle. I occasionally obliged him by translating for him
German letters, &c., and he in return revised my pamphlet on
Centralization _versus_ State Rights in 1863. H. C. Baird, a very able
writer of his school, was his nephew. The latter had two or three
sisters, whom I recall as charming girls while I was a law-student. There
were many beauties in Philadelphia in those days, and prominent at the
time, though as yet a schoolgirl, was the since far-famed Emily
Schaumberg, albeit I preferred Miss Belle Fisher, a descendant maternally
of the famous Callender beauties, and by her father's side allied to Miss
Vining, the American Queen of Beauty during the Revolution at
Washington's republican court. There was also a Miss Lewis, whose great
future beauty I predicted while as yet a child, to the astonishment of a
few, "which prophecy was marvellously fulfilled." Also a Miss Wharton,
since deceased, on whom George Boker after her death wrote an exquisite
poem. The two were, each of their kind, of a beauty which I have rarely,
if ever, seen equalled, and certainly never surpassed, in Italy. How I
could extend the list of those too good and fair to live, who have passed
away from my knowledge!--Miss Nannie Grigg--Miss Julia Biddle!--_Mais ou
sont les neiges d'antan_?
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