Alexandria Gazette

AN AMOROUS READING.
BY MISS BK BRIDE.
I went at St. Louis, to pay
to the bridal pair, who are now on a visit
to the hotel. It was in the forenoon; but at
the room in which the bride sat was darkened.
and was only faintly lighted by the blaze of
the fire. The bride was tall and delicately
formed, but too thin; but for all this, lovely
and with a blooming complexion. She was
quite young, and struck me like a rare hot
house plant, scarcely able to endure the free
winds of the open air. Her long, taper fin-
gers played with a number of little valuables
fastened to a gold chain, which, hanging
round her neck, reached to her waist. Her
dress was costly and tasteful. She looked.
however, more like an article of luxury. than
a young woman meant to be the mother of a
family. The faint light of the room, the warmth
of the fire, the soft perfumed atmosphere—ev-
erything, in short, around this young bride,
seemed to speak of effeminacy. The bride-
groom, however, was evidently no effeminate
person, but a man and a gentleman. He was
apparently very much enamored of his young
bride, whom he was about to take first to
Cincinnati, and then to Florida, and its per-
petual summer.
We were regaled with
bride-cake and sweet wine.
When I left that perfumed apartment, with
its hot-house atmosphere and its half daylight.
in which was carefully tended a beautiful hu-
man flower, I was met by a heaven as blue as
that of spring, and by a fresh, vernal air, by
sunshine and the song of birds among the
whispering trees. The contrast was delight-
ful. Ah, said I to myself, this is a different life!
After all, it is not good, no it is not good. it
has not the freshness. of nature that life which
so many ladies lead in this country: that life
of twilight in comfortable rooms, rocking
themselves by the fireside from one
year's end to another; that life of effeminate
warmth and inactivity by which means they
exclude themselves from the fresh air, from
fresh invigorating life. And the physical
weakness of the ladies of this country must,
in great measure, be ascribed to their effeminate education. It is a sort of harem-life,
although with this difference, that they, un-
like the oriental women, are here in the Wes-
tern country, regarded as sultanesses, and
the men as their subjects. It has neverthe-
less, the tendency to circumscribe their de-
velopment and to divert them from their highest and noblest purpose. The harems of the
West, no less than those of the East, degrade
the life and the consciousness of
woman.
Homes of the New World.