The Choir Invisible

"Oh yes! I am happy to inform you that at McIllvain's you can now buy the

finest Dutch and English letter-paper, gilt, embossed, or marbled."

"That is not very important; I have no correspondents."

"Well, a saddlery has been opened by two fellows from London, England, and

you can now buy Amy a new side-saddle. She needs one."

"Nor is that! The major buys the saddles for the family."

"Well, then, as I came out on Alain Street, I passed some ladies who accused

me of being on my way here, and who impressed it upon me that I must tell

you of the last displays of women-wear: painted and velvet ribbons, I think

they said, and crepe scarfs, and chintzes and nankeens and moreens and

sarcenets, and--oh yes!-some muslinette jackets tamboured with gold and

silver. They said we were becoming civilized--that the town would soon be

as good as Williamsburg, or Annapolis, or Philadelphia for such things. You

see I am like my children: I remember what I don't understand."

"I understand what I must not remember! Don't tell me of those things," she

added. "They remind me of the past; they make me think of Virginia. I wear

homespun now, and am a Kentuckian.""Well, then, the Indians fired on the

Ohio packet-boat near Three Islands and killed--"

"Oh!" she said, with pain and terror, "don't tell me of that, either! It

reminds me of the present.""Well, in Holland two thousand cats have been put

into the corn-stores, to check the ravages of rats and mice," he said,

laughing.

"What is the news from France? Do be serious!"

"In New York some Frenchmen, seeing their flag insulted by Englishmen who

took it down from the liberty-cap, went upstairs to the room of an English

officer named Codd, seized his regimental coat and tore it to pieces."

"I'm glad of it! It was a very proper action!"

"But, madam, the man Codd was perfectly innocent!"

"No matter! His coat was guilty. They didn't tear him to pieces; they tore

his coat. Are there any new books at the stores?"

"A great many! I have spent part of the last three days in looking over

them. You can have new copies of your old favourites, Joseph Andrews, or

Roderick Random, or Humphrey Clinker. You can have Goldsmith and Young, and

Chesterfield and Addison. There is Don Quixote and Hudibras, Gulliver and

Hume, Paley and Butler, Hervey and Watts, Lavater and Trenck, Seneca and

Gregory, Nepos and even Aspasia Vindicated--to say nothing of Abelard and

He1oise and Thomas a Kempis. All the Voltaires have been sold, however, and

the Tom Paines went off at a rattling gait. By the way, while on the subject

of books, tell the major that we have raised five hundred dollars toward

buying books for the Transylvania Library, and that as soon as my school is

out I am to go East as a purchasing committee. What particularly interests

me is that I am going to Mount Vernon, to ask a subscription from President

Washington. Think of that! Think of my presenting myself there with my

tricoloured cockade --a Kentucky Jacobin!"

"The President may be so occupied with the plots of you Kentucky jacobins,"

she said, "that he will not feel much like supplying you with more

literature." Then she added, looking at him anxiously, " And so you are

going away?"