I stared at her with unfeigned surprise, and disengaging my arm, which she had taken apparently to hasten my movements, I very gravely asked her meaning.

“Only, ma’am, that ladies like to go into that room by themselves, when there be no gentlemen watching them.”

On entering this mysterious apartment, the first thing I remarked, was written paper, deprecating the disgusting depravity which had led some of the visitors to mark and deface the casts in a most indecent and shameless manner.  This abomination has unquestionably been occasioned by the coarse-minded custom which sends alternate groups of males and females into the room.  Were the antique gallery thrown open to mixed parties of ladies and gentlemen, it would soon cease.  Till America has reached the degree of refinement which permits of this, the antique casts should not be exhibited to ladies at all.  I never felt my delicacy shocked at the Louvre, but I was strangely tempted to resent as an affront the hint I received, that I might steal a glance at what was deemed indecent.  Perhaps the arrangements for the exhibition of this room, the feelings which have led to them, and the result they have produced, furnish as good a specimen of the kind of delicacy on which the Americans pride themselves, and of the peculiarities arising from it, as can be found.  The room contains about fifty casts, chiefly from the antique.

In the director’s room I was amused at the means which a poet had hit upon for advertising his works, or rather HIS WORK, and not less at the elaborate notice of it.  His portrait was suspended there, and attached to the frame was a paper inscribed thus:-

’PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR of The Fredoniad, or Independence Preserved, a political, naval, and military poem, on the late war of 1812, in forty cantos; the whole compressed in four volumes; each volume averaging more than 305 pages, By RICHARD EMMONS, M.D.”

I went to the Chesnut Street Theatre to see Mr. Booth, formerly of Drury Lane, in the character of Lear, and a Mrs. Duff in Cordelia; but I have seen too many Lears and Cordelias to be easily pleased; I thought the whole performance very bad.  The theatre is of excellently moderate dimensions, and prettily decorated.  It was not the fashionable season for the theatres, which I presume must account for the appearance of the company in the boxes, which was any thing but elegant; nor was there more decorum of demeanour than I had observed elsewhere; I saw one man in the lower tier of boxes deliberately take off his coat that he might enjoy the refreshing coolness of shirt sleeves; all the gentlemen wore their hats, and the spitting was unceasing.

On another evening we went to the Walnut Street Theatre; the chief attraction of the night was furnished by the performance of a young man who had been previously exhibited as “a living skeleton.”  He played the part of Jeremiah Thin, and certainly looked the part well; and here I think must end my praise of the evening’s performances.