"I hope you will live to change your opinion," pursued Mrs. Darnel. "I cannot be all the time checking and reproving; but my consolation is that when the war is over, you will both come to your senses,--and while it lasts the officers have, fortunately, something else to think of than courtship and marriage; and are seldom long enough in one place to undertake anything more than a mere flirtation." "For my part," said Miss Clements, "nothing could induce me to marry an officer. Even in time of peace to have no settled home; and to be transferred continually from place to place, not knowing at what moment the order for removal may arrive; and certainly in time of war my anxiety for my husband's safety would be so great as entirely to destroy my happiness." "Well," said Mrs. Darnel, "I wish, for a thousand reasons, that this war was over. Setting aside all more important considerations, the inconvenience it causes in our domestic concerns is too incessant to be trifling. We are not yet prepared to live comfortably without the aid of foreign importations. The price of everything has risen enormously." "That is very true, mamma," observed Harriet; "only think of having to give two dollars a yard for slight Florence silk; such silk as before the war _we_ would not have worn at all--but now we are glad to get anything,--and two dollars a pair for cotton stockings; cambric muslin a dollar and a half a yard--a dollar for a paper of pins--twenty-five cents for a cotton ball!" "And groceries!" resumed Mrs. Darnel; "sugar a dollar a pound--lemons half a dollar a piece!" "I must say," said Caroline, "I am very tired of cream of tartar lemonade. I find it wherever I go." "Well, all this is bad enough," said Harriet; "but somehow it does not make us the least unhappy, and certainly we are anything but dull." "And then it is so pleasant," remarked Caroline, "every now and then to hear the bells ringing, and to find that it is for a victory; and it is so glorious to be taking ship after ship from the British. Bob says he envied the New Yorkers the day the frigate United States brought in the Macedonian." "I own," said Miss Clements, "that the excitement of that day, can never be forgotten by those that felt it. It had been ascertained the evening before that these ships were off Sandy Hook, but in the morning there was a heavy fog which, it was feared, would prevent their coming up to the city. Nevertheless, thousands of people were assembled at daylight on the Battery. At last a sunbeam shone out, the fog cleared off with almost unprecedented rapidity, and there lay the two frigates at anchor, side by side--the Macedonian with the American colours flying above the British ensign. So loud were the acclamations of the spectators, that they were heard half over the city, and they ceased not, till both vessels commenced firing a salute."