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Curricles, phaetons, gigs, britzskas, barouches, family chaises brought the elect of Nevis, and their guests, from St. Kitts to Bath House a little before nine o'clock; the lowly of Charlestown to the terrace before the ever open windows of the saloon where the performance was to be held. In the friendly bedrooms of the hotel there was a great shaking down of skirts, rearranging of tresses.
While with perturbed nerves he awaited Hutchinson's arrival, he must have been surprised to see moving towards his house, not a Parisian populace, pell-mell, flourishing liberty-caps and pikes, or even a growling London mob, but a peaceful train of eleven cozy chaises, conveying a very respectable committee from a public meeting, at the head of which were Warren, Otis, and Samuel Adams.
The cook took it and clapped it in the pot to boil, and went upstairs for the money; but not returning, the butcher coolly removed the pot lid, took out the mutton, and walked away with it in his tray. Yet, while living in these straits, Sheridan, when invited with his son into the country, usually went in two chaises and four he in one, and his son Tom following in the other.
"But who gave it to you, Anne?" "Some of the people in those chaises, Paul. I don't know which of them, but I daresay it was the little rosy girl." "No," said Paul, "for when she called you to the chaise door, she said, 'Here's some halfpence for you. Now, if she gave you the guinea, she must have given it to you by mistake."
It is obvious in every trifle. Servants carry their lady's train, and put her into her coach with their hat on. They walk about the streets in the rain with umbrellas to avoid putting on their hats; driving themselves in open chaises in the country without hats, in the rain too, and yet often wear them in a chariot in Paris when it does not rain.
We went up to where the chaises were to be obtained, and in less than three hours were at the King's Arms, Chatham. I asked to be shown into a room, into which I led Mrs St. Felix, trembling like an aspen leaf. I seated her on the sofa, and then asked to be shown in to Sir James O'Connor. "She is here, sir," said I. "Where?" "Follow me, Sir James."
Still they talk of the Charter and the Liberals while the cards are making, or over a game at backgammon, when they have exhausted the usual stock of dots, and have married everybody off according to the genealogies which they all know by heart. Their womenkind are haughty dames, who assume the airs of Court ladies in their basket chaises.
Paul, as soon as they went up the hill, followed with his scotcher; first he scotched the wheels of one carriage, then of another; and Anne was so much delighted with observing how well the scotcher stopped the wheels, and how much better it was than stones, that she forgot to go and hold her brother's hat to the travellers for halfpence, till she was roused by the voice of a little rosy girl, who was looking out of the window of one of the chaises.
I was perhaps more conscious of the moral smash than the physical more alive to broken hearts than to broken chaises; for, as plain as the sun at morning, there was a screw loose in this runaway match.
A few families, father, mother and a flock of children, covered the road on foot, the father with a gun usually strapped across his back. A very few people drove up in primitive carriages, something like old-fashioned English chaises. Those who drove were very proud, because such elegant carriages were rarely seen outside of Philadelphia, and betokened much social prominence.
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