The races at first felt the effects of the panic, but the crowd on Saturday, the 11th of October, was immense. Somebody must get the money that everybody loses; therefore somebody can still afford to go to the races, and the last day was also very full. Two drags set the English example of having the horses taken off and dining on the top of the coach. The notes of a key-bugle from one of them seemed to suggest Mr. Bob Sawyer and Mr. Ben Allen; but whether those young gentlemen were of the party or not I did not hear. With our delicious sky, and particularly this golden autumn, there seems to be no reason why we should not adopt the fashions of Chantilly and Ascot. We are, however, a gregarious people, and the tendency is to gather together under the protection of the grand stand.
Poor Maretzek is always the first to go, and it is understood that his opera is among the great unpaid. Every one is sorry for the poor singers, always excepting Lucca, whose jealousy of Nilsson is so aggressive that she has declared that she would sing her off the boards of the Academy of Music. _She_ is driven like a bad angel out of Paradise, while the starry Nilsson in magnificent triumph sings on superbly to constantly increasing houses at the Academy, and is lunched and fêted to her heart's content.
The Evangelical Alliance has gone, and left behind it nothing but animosities. It was really a vast movement of the Presbyterian Church: Geneva and Calvin were the exclusive proprietors. Episcopalians, Unitarians and Baptists, Methodists and Universalists, were requested to stand aside. The communions were always at some Presbyterian church. Perhaps _they_ thought the Episcopal Church exclusive, as some one said an Englishman carried his pride into his prayers, and said, "O Lord, I do most _haughtily_ beseech thee," and that the Unitarians felt "that any man who had been born in Boston did not see the necessity of being born again."
Every one is extremely well dressed, in spite of the panic. The hair is worn plain and off the brow, let us thank the genius of Fashion, so that every woman has a purer, better look. Nothing destroys the expression of a good woman like breaking over that line which Nature has made about the forehead. Our women have made themselves into wicked Faustinas and vulgar Anonymas long enough with their frizzes and short curls and "banging," as the square-cut straight lock on the forehead is called. Let us see the Madonna brow once more. The high ruff, the sleeve to the elbow, the dress cut to show the figure, all bring-back the days of our great-grandmothers: the opera is filled with Copley's portraits. The bonnets, too, are delightfully large, with long feathers. Every new fashion brings out a new crop of beauties, but I could not see what beauties were brought out by those bold bonnets of last year, which were hung on at the back of the head.