days, and yet not lifeless by any means!  Indeed, it seemed all the more a haven because the roar of the great city environed it, and one could feel, without being disturbed by, the active pulsation of human life.  And then, if one has sentiment, is there anywhere that it is more ministered to than in the city at the close of the year?  The trees in the little park grow red and yellow and brown, the leaves fall and swirl and drift in windrows by the paths, the flower-beds flame forth in the last dying splendor of their color; the children, chasing each other with hoop and ball about the walks, are more subdued than in the spring-time; the old men, seeking now the benches where the sunshine falls, sit in dreamy reminiscence of the days that are gone; the wandering minstrel of Italy turns the crank of his wailing machine, O! bella, bella, as in the spring, but the notes seem to come from far off and to be full of memory rather than of promise; and at early morning, or when the shadows lengthen at evening, the south wind that stirs the trees has a salt smell, and sends a premonitory shiver of change to the fading foliage.  But how bright are the squares and the streets, for all this note of melancholy!  Life is to begin again.

But the social season opened languidly.  It takes some time to recover from the invigoration of the summer gayety—­to pick up again the threads and weave them into that brilliant pattern, which scarcely shows all its loveliness of combination and color before the weavers begin to work in the subdued tints of Lent.  How delightful it is to see this knitting and unraveling of the social fabric year after year! and how untiring are the senders of the shuttles, the dyers, the hatchelers, the spinners, the ever-busy makers and destroyers of the intricate web we call society!  After one campaign, must there not be time given to organize for another?  Who has fallen out, who are the new recruits, who are engaged, who will marry, who have separated, who has lost his money?  Before we can safely reorganize we must not only examine the hearts but the stock-list.  No matter how many brilliant alliances have been arranged, no matter how many husbands and wives have drifted apart in the local whirlpools of the summer’s current, the season will be dull if Wall Street is torpid and discouraged.  We cannot any of us, you see, live to ourselves alone.  Does not the preacher say that?  And do we not all look about us in the pews, when he thus moralizes, to see who has prospered?  The B’s have taken a back seat, the C’s have moved up nearer the pulpit.  There is a reason for these things, my friends.