The Secrets of the Great City: A Work Descriptive of the Virtues and the Vices, the Mysteries, Miseries and Crimes of New York CityMcCabe, James Dabney
History
The Secrets of the Great City: A Work Descriptive of the Virtues and the Vices, the Mysteries, Miseries and Crimes of New York City
McCabe, James Dabney
New York (N.Y.) -- Description and travel; New York (N.Y.) -- History
"The second of these worthies we shall call Mrs. Adelle Garnier. She is
a stout creature, but endowed with a large share of good looks and
dignity of manner. She has for years past resided in fashionable
hotels, and has contrived to live on her 'face' in more senses than
one. She is specially noticeable for three facts which have been
abundantly exemplified in her career. First, she is a remarkably well
educated woman, an accomplished linguist, speaking fluently, French,
German and Italian, a skilled performer on the piano, and thoroughly
versed in the literature of the day. Second, she has always exhibited a
dislike, amounting almost to horror, of matrimony; and although she
has, during her eventful history, received several advantageous offers
of marriage, has declined them all, objecting decidedly to having her
personal movements restrained in any degree by the will of any being on
earth, not even a husband. Third, and last, and most remarkable of all,
spite of her education and talent, spite of her matrimonial chances,
she has steadily persisted in a course of life which has subjected her
constantly to a long series of indignities, apparently preferring a
wild, careless, lawless and scandalous Bohemianism to the sober routine
and conventional demands of a modern lady's _ordinary_ existence. Her
last 'adventure' occurred some few weeks since at a Broadway hotel,
from which she was expelled at a very short notice by the proprietors
in presence of a number of the guests. It is presumed that at present
she is almost penniless, though no one can safely predicate at what
place or in what guise she may appear hereafter. For an adventurer,
like a cat, has nine lives."
"The third, Miss Alice Mauley, is a petite blonde of fascinating
manners, with large blue eyes, and a luxuriant wealth of hair. Alice
has been a 'pilgrim and a stranger' in the cities of Philadelphia,
Boston, Baltimore and St. Louis, since her sixteenth year, and has
'enjoyed' the privilege of a large circle of acquaintance--the police
of these cities included. Her mode of life verges on the 'sentimental,'
and her peculiar _forte_ is entrapping the affections of 'young
bloods.' She cares not for 'love,' so-called, and is, in herself,
chaste and irreproachable in _morale_; but she devotes her energies to
procuring all the money, jewelry, diamonds and presents she can obtain
from her 'enamored ones' prior to their 'proposals for her hand.' She,
then, 'astonished at their mistaken presumption,' leaves them to regret
their folly, but never by any chance returns their presents. She
recently and seriously 'compromised' the prospects of the only son and
heir of a wealthy merchant of the metropolis, from whom she obtained
some ten thousand dollars worth of 'tokens' and 'souvenirs.' But, owing
to the exertions and worldly acumen of the young fool's papa, she has
been obliged to leave New York, and has within the last few days been
heard of from Cincinnati."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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