In The Evening Mrs. C. Had Her _Salon_, A Fashion Of Receiving
One's Friends On A Particular Night, That One Wishes Could Be
Transplanted To American Soil.
No invitations are given.
It is simply understood that on such an
evening, the season through, a lady _receives_ her friends. All
come that please, without ceremony. A little table is set out with tea
and a plate of cake. Behind it presides some fairy Emma or Elizabeth,
dispensing tea and talk, bonbons and bon-mots, with equal grace. The
guests enter, chat, walk about, spend as much time, or as little, as
they choose, and retire. They come when they please, and go when they
please, and there is no notice taken of entree or exit, no time wasted
in formal greetings and leave takings.
Up to this hour we had conversed little in French. One is naturally
diffident at first; for if one musters courage to commence a
conversation with propriety, the problem is how to escape a Scylla in
the second and a Charybdis in the third sentence. Said one of our fair
entertainers, "When I first began I would think of some sentence till
I could say it without stopping, and courageously deliver myself to
some guest or acquaintance." But it was like pulling the string of a
shower bath. Delighted at my correct sentence, and supposing me _au
fait_, they poured upon me such a deluge of French that I held my
breath in dismay. Considering, however, that nothing is to be gained
by half-way measures, I resolved upon a desperate game.
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