“Is me velvet j-a-c-k-e-t ready to try on?” drawled a lady, dropping her elegant cashmere from one shoulder, as she sauntered into Mme. ——’s dress-making saloon.

“It is not,” replied the young girl in waiting.

“Ve’y extraordinary—ve’y surprising; madame promised it, without fail, this morning.”

“Madame has been unexpectedly called out,” replied the girl, coolly rehearsing the stereotyped fib.

“Ve’y perplexing,” muttered the lady; “ve’y ridiculous—pray, when will she see me?” she asked (unwilling to trust the draping of her aristocratic limbs to less practiced hands).

“This afternoon at five,” answered the girl, fibbing a second time, knowing very well that it was part of madame’s tactics to keep her saloon daily filled with just such anxious expectants, up to the last endurable point of procrastination. And there they sat, poor imbeciles! grouped about the room, pulling over the last fashion prints, overhauling gayly-colored paper dress patterns, discussing modes, robes, basques, and trimmings, with the most ludicrously-grave earnestness, ordering ruinous quantities of point lace and velvet, with the most reckless abandon, and vying which should make themselves look most hideously-Babylonish and rainbow-like; while their husbands and fathers, in another part of the city, were hurrying from banks to counting-houses, sweating and fretting over “protested notes,” care, meanwhile, anticipating old Time in seaming their brows, and plowing their cheeks with wrinkles.

In an unfashionable, obscure part of the city, in the basement of a small two-story house, sat a woman of twenty-seven years, the mother of ten children, who were swarming about her like a hive of bees—fat, clean, rosy, noisy, merry, and happy. They had little space for their gymnastics, it is true, the little room dignified as “the parlor” being only twelve feet square; back of this was a dark bedroom, leading to a small kitchen, filled with the usual variety of culinary utensils. The pot of potatoes for their simple dinner, was boiling over the kitchen fire; the happy mother of this little family was putting the last touches to a silk dress for a lady in the neighborhood; and the baby was sleeping as sweetly, as though its brothers and sisters were not using their lungs and limbs, as God intended children’s lungs and limbs should be used. On a small table in the corner lay a pile of medical books—for the father of these ten children was absent at a medical lecture, preparatory to a physician’s practice.

“Poor George!” said the prolific young mother, with a laugh—“all these big books yet to be crammed into his curly head; never mind—I had rather do all my own work, take in dress-making, and support the family two years longer, than that he should be disappointed in his favorite wish of becoming a doctor. There he comes!” said she, dropping her needle, as a dark-eyed, intelligent-looking, mercurial little fellow bounced into the room—snatched the baby from the cradle—jumped pell-mell into the laughing group of little boys and girls, and kissed his wife’s forehead, as he helped her to draw out the dinner-table.

Ah, thought I, as I contrasted this with the scene at Madame B——’s saloon, better is a dinner of potatoes where love is, than a stalled ox and a protested note therewith!