Newport is the mart where the marriageable meet.  I took my departure for Newport next day.

II.

THE HEROINE.

I need hardly say, that, on arriving at Newport, one foggy August morning, I drove at once to the Millard.

The Millard attracted me for three reasons:  First, it was new; second, it was fashionable; third, the name would be sure to be in favor with the class I had resolved to seek my spouse among.  The term spouse I select as somewhat less familiar than wife, somewhat more permanent than bride, and somewhat less amatory than the partner of my bosom.  I wish my style to be elevated, accurate, and decorous.  It is my object, as the reader will have already observed, to convey heroic sentiments in the finest possible language.

It was upon some favored individual of the class Southern Heiress that I designed to let fall the embroidered handkerchief of affectionate selection.  At the Millard I was sure to find her.  That enormously wealthy and highly distinguished gentleman, her father, would naturally avoid the Ocean House.  The adjective free, so intimately connected with the substantive ocean, would constantly occur to his mind and wound his sensibilities.  The Atlantic House was still more out of the question.  The name must perpetually remind the tenants of that hotel of a certain quite objectionable periodical devoted to propagandism.  In short, not to pursue this process of elimination farther, and perhaps offend some friend of the class Hotel-Keeper, the Millard was not only about the cheese, per se,—­I punningly allude here to the creaminess of its society,—­but inevitably the place to seek my charmer.

The clock of the Millard was striking eleven as I entered the salle a manger for a late breakfast after my night-journey from New York by steamboat.

I flatter myself that I produced, as I intended, a distinct impression.  My deep mourning gave me a most interesting look, which I heightened by an air of languor and abstraction as of one lost in grief.  My shirt-studs were jet.  The plaits of my shirt were edged with black.  My Clarendon was, of course, black, and from its breast-pocket appeared a handkerchief dotted with spots, not dissimilar to black peppermint-drops on a white paper.  In consequence of the extreme heat of the season, I wore waistcoat and trousers of white duck; but they, too, were qualified with sombre contrasts of binding and stripes.

The waiters evidently remarked me.  It may have been the hope of pecuniary reward, it may have been merely admiration for my dress and person; but several rushed forward, diffusing that slightly oleaginous perfume peculiar to the waiter, and drew chairs for me.

I had, however, selected my position at the table at the moment of my entrance.  It was vis-a-vis a party of four persons,—­two of the sterner, two of the softer sex.  A back view interpreted them to me.  There is much physiognomy in the backs of human heads, because—­and here I flatter myself that I enunciate a profound truth—­people wear that well-known mask, the human countenance, on the front of the human head alone, and think it necessary to provide such concealment nowhere else.