THE backbone of the winter is broken. The Carnival is about over. The lights are going out and the curtain is about to be rung down. The Spring will soon come slowly up this way, and then Lent. We shall take off our masques, be good children, and moralize on the routs, the follies and frivolities of December, January and February; and moralizing, we shall pronounce the winter the gayest, wildest, most dashing and smashing Chicago has ever known.

The winter has been one perpetual ball and party. Private amusement has usurped the place of public, and as a consequence, concerts and operas have suffered. The poor Philharmonic has withered like a leaf under this neglect, and Strakosch has lost money at a frightful rate. Soiree, ball and party have succeeded each other with wonderful rapidity, and the belles have been literally kept whirling until they are worn out and pine for the grateful Lent, when they can rest and get ready for the watering places.

The milliners, mantua-makers, dress-makers, hair-dressers, and others who make such exquisite fits and tremendous bills, have been in clover. The young ladies sometimes, after a season of only one night, come home so smashed that there is little left of their light fabrics and heavy waterfalls. Papa's purse has bled freely, while mamma, who will wear a train and try to eclipse her daughter, gets trodden on and banged up and has to go into the toilet dry dock quite often for repairs. This is the reason why the milliner et al. high-priced individuals have been happy and old Blobbs has staid away from evening meetings and, growling at the fire-screen, made an Ursa Major of himself.

So we go. Young Boosey and Aurelia care little for the tariff, reconstruction, high church controversy, tax bills and legislative stealings. They are optimists. They want the best, and they want it now while the purse holds out. They have had a gay winter, will dawdle along through the spring and leave us just in time to escape the hot weather and the cholera, and we shall miss them as we miss the butterflies, and hail their return as they come back in the fall for another winter campaign. I do not know that they build many houses, endow many colleges, teach many Sunday school classes or consume much calico and cold water; but then the streets would be very monotonous, and the counter-jumpers would grow rusty and life would be tinted with ashes of roses without them.

February 16, 1867.