Society as I Have Found It

The fashionable world here have accepted the Brût champagne, and avoid all other kinds; ladies even more than men. But another revolution is to occur in this country in the next five years in the treatment of this wine. We will soon follow the example of our English brethren and never drink it until it is from eight to ten years old.

A year or two ago one of the most fashionable men in London asked me to assist him in ordering a dinner at Delmonico’s. When we came to ordering the wines, he exclaimed against the champagne. “What!” said he, “drink a champagne of 1880. Why, it is too absurd!” I told him it was that or nothing, for we were far behind them in England, drinking new champagnes and having no old ones.

The idea is prevalent that champagne will not keep in this climate. After a few years one will always order his supply from abroad yearly, keeping his champagne at his London wine merchant’s or at the vineyard. To evidence the improvement in champagne by age, I can only cite that the champagne of 1874 has sold in London at auction for $7 a bottle, and now in Paris and London you pay $8 a bottle for a ’74 wine at a restaurant, and $6 for an 1880 wine; at the vineyard itself $45 a dozen, and hard to obtain at this price. If you once drink one of these old champagnes you will never again drink a fresh wine. In England they now drink no Madeira; it is never served. At their dinners they pride themselves on giving 1874 champagne. If they can give this wine, with a Golden Sherry and a fine glass of Port, they are satisfied.

It will be well to remember that champagnes are now known to connoisseurs by their vintage. Wines of some vintages do not keep at all. In keeping champagnes, keep only, or order kept for you, the champagnes of the best vintages. Of course, there is much risk in keeping any champagne; but what all strive for, is to possess something that no one else has; that is not purchasable, I mean, in any quantity, and this now is 1874 champagne.

To properly frappé champagne, put in the pail small pieces of ice, then a layer of rock salt, alternating these layers until the tub is full. Put the bottle in the tub; be careful to keep the neck of the bottle free from the ice, for the quantity of wine in the neck of the bottle being small, it would be acted upon by the ice first. If possible, turn the bottle every five minutes. In twenty-five minutes from the time it is put in the tub, it should be in perfect condition, and should be served immediately. What I mean by perfect condition is, that when the wine is poured from the bottle, it should contain little flakes of ice; that is a real frappé.

It is often a mistake to frappé, for it takes both flavor and body from the wine, and none but a very rich, fruity wine should ever be frappéd. My theory is that for ordinary cooling of wine, it is not necessary to use salt, unless you are in a hurry. The salt intensifies the cold and makes it act more quickly. You get a speedier result. I should simply use above formula, omitting the salt. Champagne should not be left in a refrigerator for several hours before being served, as it takes away its freshness. In serving it, for one who likes it cold, the wine should be cooled sufficiently to form a bead on the outside of the glass into which it is poured. It is pretty, and the perfection of condition.

In regard to champagne of excellent years, we begin with 1857, as there were no first-rate vintages of this wine between 1846 and 1857. The great years were: 1834, 1846, 1857, 1858, 1861, 1862, 1865, 1868, 1870, 1872, and 1874, the last exceptionally fine and keeping well; 1878, 1880, and 1884, fine wines; 1885 is fair, but not to be classed with the 1884. The Romans noted the years of the celebrated growths of their wines, marked them on their wine vessels, when Rome was a Republic, with the Consul’s name, which indicated the vintage. A celebrated vintage was that of the year 632, when Opimius was Consul. It was in high esteem a century afterwards.

In clarets, we also make a mistake; we cling to them when by age they become too thin and watery. One fills up one’s wine cellar with claret, and then tenaciously holds it, until it frequently loses the fine characteristics of a first-class wine. The clarets of 1854 promised very great things, but were certainly a failure in Latour, and in some of the other wines of that year; 1857, 1858, 1881, some were good. The claret of 1865 was an extravagant wine, but developed a good deal of acidity, and is not to-day held in very high esteem, but I have tasted some perfect of that year. 1868 promised much, but has not turned out as good as was expected. 1869 sold at very low prices, but has become the best wine of very recent years. 1870 was a very big, full-bodied wine; it is now very good. Of 1871, some of them are excellent (as Haut Brion, Lafitte, Latour). The 1874’s were very good, Latour the best; 1875 was very good; 1877, quite good; 1878, very good; 1879, only moderate; 1880, light and delicate, quite good; 1881, big wines, very promising; 1884 promised well, and 1887 promised to be great wines. I do not think it is easy to be certain of Bordeaux wines until they have been in bottles some years. A wine which while in the wood may be excellent, may not ripen the right sort of way in bottles and prove disappointing. Decant all your clarets before serving them, even your vin ordinaire. If at a dinner you give both Burgundy and claret, give your finest claret with the roast, your Burgundy with the cheese. Stand up both wines the morning of the dinner, and in decanting, hold the decanter in your left hand, and let the wine first pour against the inside of the neck of the decanter, so as to break its fall. With Burgundy, the Clos Vougeots have run out. The insect has destroyed them. The Chambertins or Romanée Conti, when you give them to those who can appreciate fine wines, have a telling effect.

Table sherries should be decanted and put in the refrigerator one hour before dinner. Personally, as a table sherry I prefer to drink the new, light, delicate sherries, as they come from Spain, directly from the wood, before they are darkened by being kept in glass, and before all the water, that is always in them, has disappeared. This is the taste of the Spanish people themselves. They drink them from the wood.

There is no need of having a large cellar of wine in this country, for we Americans are such Arabs, that we are never contented to stay quietly at home and enjoy our country, and our own perfect climate. No sooner have we built a charming residence, including a wine cellar, than we must needs dash off to Europe, to see what the Prince of Wales is doing, so that literally a New Yorker does not live in his New York residence, at most, more than four or five months in the year. In the other seven or eight, his servants have ample time to leisurely drink up the wine in his cellar, bottle by bottle; therefore, I advise against laying in any large supply of wine. Your wine merchant will always supply you with all wines excepting old clarets; these you must have a stock of; and, as servants do not take to claret, you are comparatively safe in hoarding up a good lot of it. Your old champagnes you can order from London, i.e. a winter’s supply, every year, for as they say it will not keep in this climate, you must do so to get it of any age. When sherry becomes old and has been kept some time in glass, they then drink it in Spain as a liqueur.

If you cannot get hold of the best, the very best and finest old Madeira, give up that wine and take to sherry. I have seen sherry that could not be distinguished from Madeira by experts. Again, I have seen a superb sherry bring a hundred dollars a dozen. The most perfect sherry I ever drank was the “Forsyth sherry,” given to Vice-President Forsyth by the Queen of Spain, when he was the American Minister at her Court. I give during dinner a light, delicate, dry Montilla sherry. At dessert, with and after fruit, a fine Amontillado.

DINNERS.

CHAPTER XXII.

In going in to dinner, there is but one rule to be observed. The lady of the house in almost every case goes in last, all her guests preceding her, with this exception, that if the President of the United States dines with you, or Royalty, he takes in the lady of the house, preceding all of the guests. When no ladies are present, the host should ask the most distinguished guest, or the person to whom the dinner is given, to lead the way in to dinner, and he should follow all the guests. The cards on the plates indicate his place to each one. By gesture alone, the host directs his guests to the dining-room, saying aloud to the most distinguished guest, “Will you kindly take the seat on my right?”

The placing of your guests at table requires an intimate knowledge of society. It is only by constant association that you can know who are congenial. If you are assigned to one you are indifferent to, your only hope lies in your next neighbor; and with this hope and fear you enter the dining-room, not knowing who that will be. At the table conversation should be crisp; it is in bad taste to absorb it all. Macaulay, at a dinner, would so monopolize it that the great wit, Sydney Smith, said he did not distinguish between monologue and dialogue.

When the President of the United States goes to a dinner, all the guests must be assembled; they stand in a horseshoe circle around the salon; the President enters; when the lady of the house approaches him, he gives her his arm, and they lead the way to the dining-room, the President sitting in the host’s place, with his hostess on his right. On arriving at the house where he is to dine, if the guests are not all assembled, he remains in his carriage until he is notified that they are all present. No one can rise to leave the table until the President himself rises. If he happens to be deeply interested in some fair neighbor, and takes no note of time, the patience of the company is sadly tried.

On entering a salon and finding yourself surrounded by noted or fashionable people, you are naturally flattered at being included; if the people are unnoted, you are annoyed. The surprise to me is that in this city our cleverest men and politicians do not oftener seek society and become its brilliant ornaments, as in England and on the Continent of Europe. Disraeli, Mr. Gladstone, Lord Palmerston, all were in society and were great diners out. In fact, all the distinguished men of Europe make part and parcel of society; whilst here, they shirk it as if it were beneath their dignity. They should know that there is no power like the social power; it makes and unmakes. The proverb is that, “The way to a man’s heart is through the stomach.”

Now as to the length of a good dinner. Napoleon the Third insisted on being served in three-quarters of an hour. As usual here we run from one extreme to another. One of our most fashionable women boasted to me that she had dined out the day before, and the time consumed from the hour she left her house, until her return home, was but one hour and forty minutes. This is absurd. A lover of the flesh pots of Egypt grumbled to me that his plate was snatched away from him by the servant before he could half get through the appetizing morsel on it. This state of things has been brought about by stately, handsome dinners, spun out to too great length. One hour and a half at the table is long enough.

A word about the decoration of the table. In this we are now again running from one extreme to the other. A few years ago, the florist took possession of the table, and made a flower garden of it, regardless of cost. Now, at the best dinners, you see perhaps in the centre of the table one handsome basket of flowers; no bouquets de corsage or boutonnières; the table set with austere simplicity; a few silver dishes with bonbons and compotiers of fruit, that is all. Now, nothing decorates a dinner table as flowers do, and of these I think the Gloire de Paris roses, the Rothschild rose, and Captain Chrystie’s the most effective. A better result is produced by having all of one kind of flower, be it roses, or tulips, or carnations.

It is now the fashion to have the most superb embroidered table-cloths from Paris, in themselves costing nearly a year’s income. But it is to be remembered that thirty years ago we imported from England the fashion of placing in the centre of the table a handsome piece of square scarlet satin, on which to place the silver. At the dinner the eye should have a feast as well as the palate. A beautifully laid table is very effective. I have seen Her Majesty’s table at Windsor Castle all ready for her. I have heard her footmen, in green and gold, re-echo from hall to kitchen the note that “dinner is served,” and then I was told to go; but I saw all I wanted to see. Her six footmen placed their hands on the little velvet Bishop’s cap, which covered the lion and the unicorn in frosted gold on the cover of her six entrée dishes; as dinner was announced, this velvet cap was removed. The keeper of her jewel room has a large book of lithographs of just the pieces of gold plate that are to decorate Her Majesty’s table on different occasions, all regulated by the rank of her guest. Her Majesty, in the time of Prince Albert, dined at 8:15. Her head chef informed me then that her real dinner was eaten at 2 P.M., with the Prince of Wales, and it was for this he exercised his talent. At eight and a quarter she took but soup and fish.

It is to be borne in mind that a host or hostess cannot be too courteous or gracious to their guests; and again, that guests in being late at dinner oftentimes commit a breach of politeness. Apropos of this, whilst in Paris one of our Ministers to the French Court related to me the following anecdote, illustrating true French politeness. His daughter arrived late at the dinner of a high personage. When her father remonstrated, she replied, “Did you not see that one of the family arrived after us?” The next day our Minister heard that the Duchess, with whom he had dined, had sent her daughter out of the room to come in after them, to relieve them of any embarrassment at being late.

Another point has had some discussion. At a large dinner, where the only lady is the hostess, should she rise and receive each guest? This is still a vexed question. Again, at a large dinner of men, is it incumbent on every one present to rise on the entrance of each guest? On one occasion I failed myself to do this, not thinking it necessary. The distinguished man who entered said afterwards that I had “slighted him.” It was certainly unintentional. In a small room, if all get up, it must create confusion.

If you intend to decline an invitation to dinner, do so at as early a date as possible. A dinner invitation, once accepted, is a sacred obligation. If you die before the dinner takes place, your executor must attend the dinner. (This is not to be taken literally, but to illustrate the obligation.) The person to whom the dinner is given takes in the hostess, if she is present, going in first with her; that is, if it is only men (no ladies present but the hostess). Should there be ladies, he still takes in the hostess, but then follows all the guests; going in with the hostess after all the guests. The only exception to this rule is where the President of the United States, or Royalty dines with you.

In England, in the note of invitation to dinner, you are never asked to meet any one but Royalty. The distinction of rank makes the reason for this obvious. If Royalty dines with you, at the top of the note of invitation, in the left hand corner, it is written: “To meet His Royal Highness,” or other Royalty. Our custom is otherwise. It is to invite you to meet Mr. Robinson, or Mrs. Robinson, or Mr. and Mrs. Robinson. This is accepted and approved by all in this country, for in this way you are privileged to invite, at a day’s notice, any number of guests; for one sees it is to meet a stranger, temporarily here; a sufficient reason for so short a notice to a large dinner; besides which you have it in your power to pay the stranger or strangers a compliment in a pointed way, by making them or him the honored guest of that dinner.

If you propose accepting, your note of acceptance should be sent the day after the invitation has been received. After dining at a ladies’ dinner it is obligatory that you leave your card at the house where you have dined, either the next day or within a day or two. This is called, by the French, a visite de digestion. In England, this custom is dying out, for men have not the time to do it.

I would here compare society to a series of intersecting circles; each one is a circle of its own, and they all unite in making what is known as general society. Meeting people at a large ball is no evidence of their being received in the smaller circles. What the French call the petit comité of good society is the inmost circle of all, but, naturally, it is confined to a very few. Meeting a person constantly at dinner, at the most exclusive houses, should be sufficient evidence to you that he or she is received everywhere, and if you find people persistently excluded from the best houses at dinners, you may be satisfied that there is some good reason for it.

When you introduce a man into the sanctuary of your own family, it is supposed by a fiction to be the greatest compliment you can pay him; but do not be misled by this, for there is nothing more trying to the guest than to be the one outsider. A friend of mine invariably refuses such invitations. “Why,” said he, “my dinner at home is sufficiently good; I am called out with my wife,—both of us compelled to don our best attire, order the carriage, and go to see and be with, whom? A family whose members are not particularly interesting to us.” Men with whom you are only on a business footing you should dine at your Club, and not inflict them on your family.

COOKS AND CATERING.

CHAPTER XXIII.

Twenty years ago there were not over three chefs in private families in this city. It is now the exception not to find a man of fashion keeping a first-class chef or a famous cordon bleu. In the last six years Swedish women cooks have come over here, and are excellent, and by some supposed to be better than chefs. No woman, in my opinion, can give as finished a dinner as a man. There is always a something in the dinner which has escaped her. It is like German and Italian opera,—there is a finish to the Italian that the Germans can never get. But Swedish cooks deserve special mention; they are really wonderful—cleanliness itself. That is where the French chef fails. He must have scullions tracking his very footsteps to keep things clean, while the Swedish woman does her work without making dirt. These women get nearly as large wages as the men,—sixty dollars a month and a scullion maid. What a contrast to living in France! I had the best chef in Pau in 1856 for twenty-five dollars, and the scullion received three dollars a month.

The question is often asked, What is the difference in expense to a household between a chef or a woman cook? This question is only learned by experience, which teaches me that with a woman, my butcher’s bill would be $250 to $275 a month; with a chef, $450 to $500. Grocer’s bill, with woman cook, say, $75; with a chef, $125. This does not include entertaining. For a dinner of twelve or fourteen one’s marketing is easily sixty dollars, without the foie gras or fruit. An A1 chef’s wages is $100 a month; he takes ten per cent. commission on the butcher, grocer, baker, and milkman’s bill. If he does not get it directly, he gets it indirectly. In other words, besides his wages, he counts on these commissions. I speak now of the ablest and best; others not quite so capable take five per cent.

Always remember that the Frenchman is a creature of impulses, and works for two things, glory and money. An everyday dinner wearies him, but a dinner privé, a special dinner, oh, this calls forth his talent, which shows that the custom some have of calling in and employing a chef to cook them a special dinner is correct. If you do not keep a chef out of respect for your purse or your health, it is a good plan to know of an “artist” whom you can employ on special occasions, with the express agreement that he submits the list of what he wants, and lets you make the purchases, for these gentry like to make a little economie, which always benefits themselves, and such economie gives you poor material for him to work upon, instead of good.

How often have I heard a hostess boast, “I never give any attention to the details of my dinner, I simply tell my butler how many people we are to have.” In nine cases out of ten this is apparent in the dinner. Madame Rothschild, who has always given the best dinners in Paris, personally supervises everything. The great Duchess of Sutherland, the Queen’s friend, when she entertained, inspected every arrangement personally herself. I daily comment to my cook on the performance of the previous day. No one, especially in this country, can accomplish great results without giving time and attention to these details. No French cook will take any interest in his work unless he receives praise and criticism; but above all things, you must know how to criticise. If he finds you are able to appreciate his work when good, and condemn it when bad, he improves, and gives you something of value.

Now let us treat of dinners as given before the introduction of chefs, and still preferred by the majority of people.

The best talent with poor material may give a fair dinner, but if the material is poor, the dinner will evidence it. For forty years I have always marketed myself and secured the respect of my butcher, letting him know that I knew as much if not more than he did.

In selecting your shin of beef, remember that a fresh shin is always the best for soup. In choosing fish, look at their gills, which should be a bright red.

See your filet cut with the fat well marbled, cut from young beef. Sweetbreads come in pairs; one fine, one inferior. Pay an extra price, and get your butcher to cut them apart and give you only the two large heart breads, leaving to him the two thin throat breads to sell at a reduced price.

In poultry there are two kinds of fat, yellow and white. Fowls fed on rice have white fat; those on corn meal, yellow fat. By the feet of the bird, you can tell its age.

The black and red feathered fowls are always preferred. Never take a gray feathered bird.

Look at the head of the canvasback and the redhead; see them together, and then you will readily see the birds to pick, i.e. the canvasback. Weigh in your hand each snipe or woodcock; the weight will tell you if the bird is fat and plump.

In buying terrapin, look at each one, and see if they are the simon-pure diamond back Chesapeakes.

In choosing your saddle of mutton, take the short-legged ones, the meat coming well down the leg, nearly reaching the foot; a short, thick, stubby little tail; must have the look of the pure Southdown, with black legs and feet.

Of hothouse grapes, I find the large white grapes the best, Muscats of Alexandria.

Parch and grind your coffee the day you drink it. Always buy green coffee.

Never use the small timbales of pâté de foie gras, generally given one to each guest. Always have an entire foie gras, be it large or small, for in this way you are apt to get old foie gras thus worked up.

Always buy your foie gras from an A1 house, never from the butcher or fruiterer.

I here give as a recollection of the past the

On repeatedly visiting the West Indies, I found that two of the best Carolina and Georgia dishes, supposed always to have emanated from the African brain, were imported from these islands, and really had not even their origin there, but were brought from Bordeaux to the West Indies, and thence were carried to the South. I refer to the Crab à la Creole, and Les Aubergines farcies à la Bordelaise.

After the great revolution, when the Africans of Hayti drove from the island their former masters, good French cooking came with them to Baltimore, and other parts of the South. In talking of Southern dishes, I must not forget the Southern barnyard-fed turkey. They were fattened on small rice and were very fine. In discussing Southern dinners, I cannot omit making mention of the old Southern butler, quite an institution; devoted to his master, and taking as much pride in the family as the family took in itself. Among Southern household servants (all colored people), the man bore two names as well as the woman. The one he answered to as servant, the other was his title. Whenever, as a boy, I wanted particularly to gratify my father’s old butler, I would give him his title, which was “Major Brown.” He was commonly called Nat. I remember, on one occasion, a guest at my father’s table asking Major Brown to hand him the rice, whilst he was eating fish. The old gray-haired butler drew himself up with great dignity, and replied, “Massa, we don’t eat rice with fish in this house.”

Some features of the everyday Southern dinner were pilau, i.e. boiled chickens on a bed of rice, with a large piece of bacon between the chickens; “Hoppin John,” that is, cowpeas with bacon; okra soup, a staple dish; shrimp and prawn pie; crab salad; pompey head (a stuffed filet of veal); roast quail and snipe, and, during the winter, shad daily, boiled, broiled and baked.

As there is reciprocity in everything, if you dine with others, they, in turn, must dine with you. Passing several winters at Nassau, N.P., I dined twice a week, regularly, with the Governor of the Bahamas. I suggested to him the propriety of my giving him a dinner. He smiled, and said:

“My dear fellow, I represent Her Majesty; I cannot, in this town, dine out of my own house.”

“Egad!” said I, “then dine with me in the country!”

“That will do,” he replied; “but how will you, as a stranger, get up a dinner in this land, where it is a daily struggle to get food?”

“Leave that to me,” I said. The Governor’s accepting this invitation, recalled a story my father oft related, which caused me some anxiety as to the expense of my undertaking. A distinguished man with whom he was associated at the bar was sent as our Minister to Russia; when he returned home, my father interviewed him as to his Russian experience. He said, that after being repeatedly entertained by the royal family, he felt that it was incumbent on him, in turn, to entertain them himself; so he approached the Emperor’s grand Chamberlain and expressed this wish, who at once accepted an invitation to breakfast for the whole Imperial family. “McAllister,” he said, “I gave that breakfast; I was charmed with its success, but my dear man, it took my entire fortune to pay for it. I have been a poor man ever since.”

Having this party on hand, I went to the chef of the hotel, interviewed him, found he had been at one time the head cook of the New York Hotel in this city; so I felt safe in his hands. I went to work and made out a list of all the French dishes that could be successfully rechaufféd. Such as côtelettes de mouton en papillotte, vol au vent à la financière, boudins de volaille à la Richelieu, timbales de riz de veau, et quenelle de volaille; a boiled Yorkshire ham, easily heated over, to cook which properly it must be simmered from six to seven hours until you can turn the bone; then lay it aside twelve hours to cool; then put it in an oven, and constantly baste it with a pint of cider. It must be served hot, even after being cut. The oftener it is placed in the oven and heated the better it becomes. Thus cooked, they have been by one of my friends hermetically sealed in a tin case and sent to several distinguished men in England, who have found them a great delicacy.

I then hired for the day for $20 a shut-up country place; got plenty of English bunting, quantities of flowers; saw that my champagne was of the best and well frappéd; made a speech to the waiters and cook, urging them to show these Britishers what the Yankee could do when put to his stumps; and then with a long cavalcade of cooks, waiters, pots, and pans, heading the procession myself, went off to my orange-grove retreat, some five miles from Nassau, made my men work like beavers, and awaited the arrival of my sixty English guests, who were coming to see the American fiasco in the way of a country dinner and fête. In they came, and great was their surprise when they beheld a table for sixty people, pièces montés of confectionery, flowers, wines all nicely decanted, and a really good French dinner, at once served to them. I only relate this to show that where there is a will there is a way, and that you can so work upon a French cook’s vanity that he will, on a spurt like this, outdo himself.

Marvelous to relate, the chef positively refused to be recompensed.

“No, sir,” he replied; “I am well off; I wish no pay. Monsieur has appreciated my efforts. Monsieur knows when things are well done. He has made a great success. All the darkies on this island could not have cooked that dinner. I am satisfied.”

I was so pleased with the fellow, that when he broke down in health he came to me, and I had him as my cook two Newport summers. I kept him alive by giving him old Jamaica rum and milk fresh from the cow, taken before his breakfast,—an old Southern remedy for consumption.

Some of his remarks on Nassau are worthy of repeating. I said to him, “Chef, why don’t they raise vegetables on this fruitful island? Why bring them all from New York?”

“Monsieur,” he replied, “here you sow your seed at night, by midnight it is ripe and fit to cook; by morning it has gone to seed. The same way with sheep. You bring a flock of sheep here, with fine fleeces of wool; in a few months they are goats, and not wool enough on them to plug your ears.

”

BALLS.

CHAPTER XXIV.

On examining the premises, I found that on a new floor they had put a heavy coat of varnish; there was nothing then to be done but to sprinkle it thickly with corn meal, and then sweep it off, and renew the dressing from time to time. It is well to say here that if a floor is too slippery (which it often is, if hard wood is used and it is new), there is nothing to be done but to sprinkle it with powdered pumice-stone, sweeping it off before dancing on it; and again, if it is not slippery enough, then, as above, give it repeated doses of corn meal, and the roughest floor is soon put in good condition to dance on.

The opening quadrille of this ball was very effective. We formed in the second story of the Hall. I led the way to the ball-room with the “fairest of the fair,” the daughter of one of the most distinguished men in this country (who had not only been Governor of this State, but Secretary of State of the United States). We were surrounded by a noble throng of old New Yorkers, all eager to view the opening quadrille. The ladies were in Colonial costumes, representing Lady Washington and the ladies of her court. As I walked through the crowded rooms, having on my arm one of our brilliant society women, “a flower which was not quite a flower, yet was no more a bud,” we met approaching us a lady in indeed gorgeous apparel—so gorgeous, that the lady on my arm at once accosted her with, “Good gracious, my dear Mrs. B——, what have you got on? Let me look at you.” Her head was a mass of the most superb ostrich plumes, Prince of Wales feathers, which towered above her, and as she advanced would bend gracefully forward, nodding to you, as it were, to approach and do her honor. Her dress, neck, and shoulders were ablaze with jewels and precious stones, and in her hand she carried an old Spanish fan, such as a queen might envy. The following reply to the query came from this royal dame: “What have I got on? Why, Madame, I had a grandmother!” “Had you, indeed! Then, if that was her garb, she must have been Pocahontas, or the Empress of Morocco!” The war of words beginning to be a little sharp, I pressed on, only to meet another famous lady, whose birthplace was Philadelphia, and who had had no end of grandmothers. She wore a superb dress of scarlet and gold, tight-fitting, such as was worn during the Empire. Another young woman wore her great-grandmother’s dress, pink and brown striped brocade, cut like Martha Washington’s dress in the Republican Court, in which her great grandmother figured. The wife of a prominent jurist, a remarkably handsome woman, with a grand presence and a noble carriage, representing Lady Washington, wore, to all eyes, the most attractive costume there.

During the winter of 1877, a Southern woman of warm sympathies, great taste, and natural ability, having married a young man of colossal fortune, was urged to take in hand the cause of the wounded Christians in the Russian-Turkish War, and raise funds to send to their relief. To do this, she formed the “Society of the Crescent and the Cross,” and a ball was given under her auspices at the Academy of Music, remembered in society as the “Turkish Ball.”

This lady did me the honor of making me the Chairman of the Floor Committee of that ball. Consulting with her, we selected the members of the opening quadrille, and took good care to choose the most brilliant women in this city. My partner was one of the greatest belles New York has ever had, a woman of such air and distinction, such beauty of face and charm of manner, as we read of, but rarely see.

Our quadrille, formed on the stage of this large opera house, with the guests of the ball filling the galleries and looking down on it, was no sooner over than I found we were in this dilemma: Our little quadrille was left in full possession of the vast auditorium, and the question was, how to get the people to leave the boxes and come down to us. It was not in any way a full ball, and as the ladies who had danced in the quadrille at once retired to their boxes, they left me, as it were, sole occupant of the dancing floor. However, I rushed around and here and there collected dancing men, and succeeded in getting a respectable number on the floor, and infused spirit into the dancing.

The trouble in such cases is the indisposition of ladies to dance at a public ball, other than in an opening quadrille. The ball, however, went merrily on to a late hour.

A few years later, I was asked to be one of the Floor Committee of the ball to be given to the distinguished French and German officers who came over to join in our celebration of the Centennial of the Battle of Yorktown. This was the invitation:

Experience had taught me never to go on a committee in any social matter unless the committee was formed by myself, or made up of personal friends on whom I could rely, and who would second and support me in my work; for I well knew that it requires hard head-work and hand-work to carry through to success any social project. Sometimes it happens—it has often happened to me—that you have men on a committee with you who are wofully ignorant of the work they have undertaken to superintend, who in one breath tell you “I know nothing about this business,” and in the next criticise, discuss, and deluge you with useless and worthless suggestions, and then, when they find they themselves can do nothing turn the whole matter over to you and tell you to “go ahead.” You do go ahead and do their work, and then, when they find it is effectual, and they see your efforts will be crowned with success, they quietly come in and appropriate the credit of it.

However, on this occasion I agreed to act, as my duties were confined to forming the opening quadrille, and taking charge of the dancing. Picture to yourself a huge hall, one mass of human beings awaiting the opening of the ball, impatient of delay, anxious to dash off into the waltz, tempted by the inspiriting strains coming from a perfect band of one hundred well-trained musicians. Then, at one end of this vast hall, a stage filled with ladies in brilliant costumes, and foreign officers all in uniform; the Governor of the State, the Mayor of the City, and the chairmen of the various Yorktown committees; then your humble servant as one of the Floor Committee, flitting from one group to another, instructing each of them what they were to do. The position was indeed droll. I stood behind the Governor, who was to all outward appearances conversing with General Boulanger, but was literally squeezing my hand and asking me what he was to do. One distinguished German general promptly said, “I go it blind! I will simply do what the others do.” These were the forces I had to marshal and put through a quadrille. I dodged from one to the other and called out the figures, and breathed a sigh of relief when the dance was concluded.

Looking around the galleries and scanning all the distinguished people, my eye lit upon a wonderfully bright and intelligent face. Inwardly I said, “There is a man among men. Who can it be?” My curiosity was so aroused that I went into his box, introduced myself to him as one of the Floor Committee, and said, “I have never seen you before; I know you are a distinguished man. Pray who are you?” Laughingly, he replied, “I am James G. Blaine.” “Well,” I said, “my instincts have not failed me this time. I have heard and read of you for years. Now I see your genius in your face.” Beauty in woman, genius in man, happily I never fail to discover.

The invitation to this ball was as follows: