PRUE AND I. ... BY GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. "Knitters in the sun. 19 Twelfth Night. NEW YORK: DIX, EDWARDS & CO., 321 BROADWAY. 1856. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1856, by GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York. MILLER & HOLMAN, A WORD TO THE GENTLE READER. An old book-keeper, who wears a white cravat and black trowsers in the morning, who rarely goes to the opera, and never dines out, is clearly a person of no fashion and of no superior sources of information. His only journey is from his house to his office; his only satisfaction is in doing his duty; his only happiness is in his Prue and his children. What romance can such a life have? What stories can such a man tell? Yet I think, sometimes, when I look up from the parquet at the opera, and see Aurelia smiling in the boxes, and holding her court of love, and youth, and beauty, that the historians have not told of a fairer queen, nor the travellers seen devouter homage. And when I re memember that it was in misty England that quaint old George Herbert sang of the "Sweet day so cool, so calm, so bright— The bridal of the earth and sky," I am sure that I see days as lovely in our clearer air, and do not believe that Italian sunsets have a more gorgeous purple or a softer gold. |