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The advantage of going to the French dress-makers is that they'll wait twice as long for their money as the people at home. And they're all crazy to dress me Bertha Shallum will tell you so: she says no one ever had such a chance! That's why I was willing to come to this stuffy little hotel I wanted to save every scrap I could to get a few decent things.
Not understanding the world very well, certainly having very little knowledge of the tastes and feelings of wealthy people, she conceived that the more brilliantly she was attired the more likely she would be to please this rich young man. It came home as dresses from French dress-makers are very apt to do just in time for her to put it on for the party.
And Miss Abraham didn't have to have a dozen dress-makers in the house for a month or two, and messenger boys, and dry goods clerks, and have to stand and be fitted for basks and polenays, and back drapery, and front drapery, and tea gowns, and dinner gowns, and drivin' gowns, and mornin' gowns, and evenin' gowns, and etectery, etcetery, etcetery.
But the opera experienced no interruption: such an event would be regarded as a public calamity in the capital. In fact, this expensive establishment affords employ to a vast number of persons. The singers, dancers, musicians, machinists, painters, tailors, dress-makers, scene-shifters, &c. attached to it, would constitute a little nation.
Now there are short interviews in parlors, in galleries, and at the Opéra Comique. They chat; that's all right, but chatting is not sufficient. Wit is something, but not everything. A waltz furnishes much knowledge that conversation cannot. Dress-makers nowadays are so wily. They know how to bring out this point and hide that; they remodel bad figures.
In the second class are servants who have a quick perception of what is to be done, and who make all that is directly apparent to the eye look well, but a closer observation shows many an unswept corner and neglected duty; dress-makers and milliners whose work is ornamental, tasteful, and becoming, though the ornamentation is apt to be too great for the value of the material, and the work will now and then come in pieces for lack of being thoroughly finished; teachers who infuse brightness and quickness into their scholars, but whose instructions are more showy than solid.
Those of the first class are dress-makers whose work never fits, milliners whose bonnets look as if they were not intended for the wearers, servants who do nothing rightly unless the eye of their mistress is upon them, teachers whose pupils are taught as if they were beings without life or reason; and in their highest relations, as wives and mothers, they are those with whom nothing goes as it should, whose daily lives are but a succession of mistakes and catastrophies, whose husbands never find a comfortable home to which they may return for repose after a day of toil, whose children are "dragged up, not brought up."
The ladies cluster like bees around these flowery goods, and, after some hours of bargaining, disputing, and purchasing, the vendor pockets the golden honey, and marches off. As dress-makers in Havana are scarce, dear, and bad, our fair friends at the hotel make up these dresses mostly themselves, and astonish their little world every day by appearing in new attire. "How extravagant!" you say.
The man pays it by big tips to the servants, by playing cards beyond his means, by flowers and presents and and lots of other things that cost; the girl pays it by tips and cards too oh, yes, I've had to take up bridge again and by going to the best dress-makers, and having just the right dress for every occasion, and always keeping herself fresh and exquisite and amusing!"
The blue chatterer is seen and heard every where; it no man will attempt to silence by throwing the handkerchief. The next species the mock blue is scarcely worth noticing; gone to ladies' maids, dress-makers, milliners, &c., found of late behind counters, and in the oddest places.
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