Well!—­the St. Cecilia you must know (its counterparts are to be found in all our great cities) is a miniature Almacks-a sort of leach-cloth, through which certain very respectable individuals must pass ere they can become the elite of our fashionable world.  To become a member of the St. Cecilia-to enjoy its recherch assemblies-to luxuriate in the delicate perfumes of its votaries, is the besetting sin of a great many otherwise very sensible people.  And to avenge their disappointment at not being admitted to its precious precincts, they are sure to be found in the front rank of scandal-mongers when anything in their line is up with a member.  And it is seldom something is not up, for the society would seem to live and get lusty in an atmosphere of perpetual scandal.  Any amount of duels have come of it; it hath made rich no end of milliners; it hath made bankrupt husbands by the dozen; it hath been the theatre of several distinguished romances; it hath witnessed the first throbbings of sundry hearts, since made happy in wedlock; it hath been the shibolath of sins that shall be nameless here.  The reigning belles are all members (provided they belong to our first families) of the St. Cecilia, as is also the prettiest and most popular unmarried parson.  And the parson being excellent material for scandal, Mother Rumor is sure to have a dash at him.  Nor does this very busy old lady seem over-delicate about which of the belles she associates with the parson, so long as the scandal be fashionable enough to afford her a good traffic.

There is continually coming along some unknown but very distinguished foreigner, whom the society adopts as its own, flutters over, and smothers with attentions, and drops only when it is discovered he is an escaped convict.  This, in deference to the reputation of the St. Cecilia, we acknowledge has only happened twice.  It has been said with much truth that the St. Cecilia’s worst sin, like the sins of its sister societies of New York, is a passion for smothering with the satin and Honiton of its assemblies a certain supercilious species of snobby Englishmen, who come over here, as they have it (gun and fishing-rod in hand), merely to get right into the woods where they can have plenty of bear-hunting, confidently believing New York a forest inhabited by such animals.  As for our squaws, as Mr. Tom Toddleworth would say, (we shall speak more at length of Tom!) why! they have no very bad opinion of them, seeing that they belong to a race of semi-barbarians, whose sayings they delight to note down.  Having no society at home, this species of gentry the more readily find themselves in high favor with ours.  They are always Oxonians, as the sons of green grocers and fishmongers are sure to be when they come over here (so Mr. Toddleworth has it, and he is good authority), and we being an exceedingly impressible people, they kindly condescend to instruct us in all the high arts, now and then correcting our very bad English.  They are clever fellows generally, being sure to get on the kind side of credulous mothers with very impressible-headed daughters.