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In addition to toning down my exuberance with the softening influence of ladies’ society, Mrs. Lawk decided on a course of restriction. My allowance of clean linen suddenly diminished one-half and under no circumstances was I to presume to take a fresh pocket-handkerchief more than once in two days. She changed the dinner-hour, and declared supper (except for Malinda Jane, poor dear!) strictly prohibited. For a time I mitigated the last grievance by eating oysters; but, an unlucky burst of confidence having divulged the dissipation, a solemn lecture on my duty to my family was its quietus. Every article of food was put under lock and key, the night-latch was changed, and Mrs. Lawk, in addition to her duties as jailer to Master Moses Alphonso, constituted herself turnkey of the establishment. The parlor, except when we “received,” was declared forbidden ground: her dismay at finding my papers there, one evening, was perfectly heart-rending. There was a sudden inquiry concerning my loose change, and I was furnished with a memorandum-book in which to write down my daily disbursements. Frequent visits to the opera (oh, the torture of those evenings!) had been an invariable rule with the Mountchessingtons; and, at the risk of rendering impotent the tympanum of both ears, I was compelled to continue that respectable custom. Persons occupying our position should be careful with whom they associated; and the character of my companions underwent a severe investigation. She even interfered with my business, and declared the soap brokerage (one of my most lucrative departments) utterly beneath a gentleman. One by one my little personal comforts faded away. Symptoms of annoyance, persistently repeated, whenever I took off my coat or put on my slippers, kept me at all times prepared for the streets. Cabbage (a favorite dish) was quietly discarded from the dinner-table. My library was turned into a nursery for Master B.

The mute, unresisting manner in which I surrendered my fading glory was surprising. I was appalled in contemplating it; I am breathless now with indignation in referring to it. In short, like Daniel and the Hebrew children, I went up through much tribulation; but my deliverance (oh, how I daily and hourly thank Divine Providence for that blessed moment!) was at hand.

It was the evening of an election for an alderman, I think; but, as in our retired portion of the city none but the lowest vagabonds gave politics a thought, there was comparatively no excitement. Mrs. Lawk, from the wide circle of society in which she moved, had invited a goodly number to an entertainment. Even our inordinate supply of sofas were filled, and scarcely a chair in the house remained unoccupied. In a rash moment I asked two or three of my own cronies; but not many minutes elapsed ere both my companions and myself were made to feel the folly of the temerity.

Ignorant of dancing, unskilled in whist or the art of polite conversation, we were terminating our third hour of judicious snubbing in a corner. Mrs. McSimpkins had just concluded a battle-piece of great length and power, when the rehearsal of our shuddering comments was suddenly banished by the deafening roll of a drum. I rushed to the window, and, to my horror, discovered a torchlight procession halted immediately in front of the house. Perhaps a hundred men, in all stages of political enthusiasm and intoxication, surrounded by a crowd of wretched women and girls, waved their lights with demoniac frenzy, and, apparently through a common throat, gurgled three hideous cheers. There was a charge of Mrs. Lawk’s friends to the windows, and then a stampede to the back parlor. In vain I expostulated; idly I insisted on my utter lack of interest in the questions of the day: the political party would come in, and how was I to prevent it? The absence of embarrassment and amiable indifference to form that characterized the intrusion was something unique. There was a difference in shape and mode of wearing, about the hats, really refreshing, and a variety of quality and nauseousness in the cigars everybody smoked, that, if anything, added zest to the scene.