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Updated: May 3, 2025
There were such joyous exclamations; such bursts of delight; such springing and jumping about, that Julia became infected with the general pleasure, and was a happy child herself. Yes! even though the fillagree box had been shown off and admired. But what do children in general know about the value of things and how much they cost?
The literary correspondence with these gentlemen is interesting, as a model of what once passed for fine letter-writing. Every nerve was strained to outdo each other in carving all thoughts into a fillagree work of rhetoric; and the amoebaean contest was like that between two village cocks from neighboring farms endeavoring to overcrow each other.
There were likewise several representations of plumes of feathers in fillagree work, some of gold and others of silver, with several fans of the same materials, and some beautiful plumes of green feathers. There were likewise thirty loads of the finest cotton cloth, and many other articles which I do not now remember.
Do not then let you and me scold too much at Julia, but let us keep on the watch to drive away from ourselves the discontented grumbling thoughts that are apt to make us all ungrateful to God. Julia did not sleep well. The fillagree box was a fort of night-mare to her.
The procession of the pipe, in great houses, is striking: slaves in showy dresses advancing in order, with the lighted chibouques to their mouths waving them to and fro; others bearing vases of many-coloured sherbets, and surrounding a superior domestic, who carries the strong and burning coffee in small cups of porcelain supported in frames of silver fillagree, all placed upon a gorgeous waiter covered with a mantle of white satin, stiff and shining with golden embroidery.
Slightly above the middle stature, and with a waist of scarce a span’s circumference, her form was exquisitely full and rounded; the sweeping outlines of her snow-white and dimpled arms, bare to the shoulders, and set off by many strings of pearl, which were themselves scarcely whiter than the skin on which they rested; the swan-like curvature of the dazzling neck; the wavy and voluptuous development of her bust, shrouded but not concealed by the plaits of her white linen stola, fastened on either shoulder by a clasp of golden fillagree, and gathered just above her hips by a gilt zone of the Grecian fashion; the small and shapely foot, which peered out with its jewelled sandal under her gold-fringed draperies; combined to present to the eye a very incarnation of that ideal loveliness, which haunts enamored poets in their dreams, the girl just bursting out of girlhood, the glowing Hebe of the soft and sunny south.
So now you see this triumph of simplicity over art, despoiled the fillagree box of all its horrors, for the innocent children admired her shells yet more unsophisticated, and insensible to the long story about the value of the rubies, the maid of honour, and even the queen's hairs.
Well, she amused herself tolerably in spite of the visions of the fillagree box and the queen's hair, which now and then came between her and her usual feeling of self-satisfaction. Presently her young friends came several little girls of various ages, and now nature once more revived in poor Julia. The children felt and expressed such hearty pleasure at the sight of her treasures.
But the thought of the fillagree box by degrees took possession of her mind and rankled there as before. She too had a Governess, and many lessons to learn and much to do, and she did them; but neither English history nor French fairy tales could quite drive away the fillagree box.
We had a concert of admirable music at the house of our new acquaintance, in the evening, and were introduced by his means to many people of fashion; the ladies were pretty, and dressed with much taste; no caps at all, but flowers in their heads, and earrings of silver fillagree finely worked; long, light, and thin: I never saw such before, but it would be an exceeding pretty fashion.
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