_MRS.

JOHN SEYMOUR'S PARTY, AND WHAT CAME OF IT_.
Mrs.John Seymour's party marked an era in the annals of Springdale.
Of this, you may be sure, my dear reader, when you consider that it was projected and arranged by Mrs.Lillie, in strict counsel with her friend Mrs.Follingsbee, who had lived in Paris, and been to balls at the Tuileries.

Of course, it was a tip-top New-York-Paris party, with all the new, fashionable, unspeakable crinkles and wrinkles, all the high, divine, spick and span new ways of doing things; which, however, like the Eleusinian mysteries, being in their very nature incommunicable except to the elect, must be left to the imagination.
A French _artiste_, whom Mrs.Follingsbee patronized as "my confectioner," came in state to Springdale, with a retinue of appendages and servants sufficient for a circus; took formal possession of the Seymour mansion, and became, for the time being, absolute dictator, as was customary in the old Roman Republic in times of emergency.
Mr.Follingsbee was forward, fussy, and advisory, in his own peculiar free-and-easy fashion; and Mrs.Follingsbee was instructive and patronizing to the very last degree.

Lillie had bewailed in her sympathizing bosom John's unaccountable and most singular moral Quixotism in regard to the wine question, and been comforted by her appreciative discourse.

Mrs.Follingsbee had a sort of indefinite faith in French phrases for mending all the broken places in life.