It offered
delightful circles composed of enlightened men and modest and handsome
women, whose talents heightened their personal attractions." To-day,
Newport is the rendezvous of the best society of the land. Handsome
women and clever men meet and greet there, but can the society be more
distinguished than, from this description, it must have been a century
ago? We wonder if the stately dames who in the eighteenth century held
court here would quite approve of the _laissez-aller_ of modern
intercourse. The youth of to-day, whose highest praise for his fair
partner of the cotillon is often that she is "an awfully good fellow,"
has little kinship with his ancestor, who used to wait at the
street-corner to see the object of his devotion go by under the convoy
of her father and mother and a couple of faithful colored footmen,
thinking himself happy meanwhile if his divinity gave him a shy glance.
The gay girl of the period, who scampers in her pony chaise down the
avenue from one engagement to the other, and whose most sacred
confidence is apt to be that she adores horses and loves "pottering
about the stable," is, with all her charms, quite different from the
blushing little beauty of 1780, who in powdered hair, quilted petticoat
and high, red-heeled shoes gave her lover a modest little glance at the
street-corner, thinking it a most delicious and unforeseen bit of
romance to have a lover at all.
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