Ashtabula telegraph. (Ashtabula, Ohio) 1874-1880, 1879-08-08
OUR LONDON LETTER.
Regular Correspondenee.

The town is semptying rapidly, the season
is almost at an end. There has been, again
in the course Of the now practically mori-
bund season, a much larger average than
usual of court mourning. One sinister
event after another has thrown royalty into
sables; the fashionable and middle-class
society being both highly initiative bodies.
Mourning as prescribed by the Court Cir
cular has meant more or less modified black
garments in many grades of the social
scale. The energetic prOpriatOrs of ''Inag-
asins de dual" may well have prOfited from
the circumstance of there having been what
physicians and undertakers used to call "a
nice sickly season." but their feelings of
complaeeney may not have been shared by
the MERGERS and milliners who purvey ''the
newest spring fashions" and 'stbe latest
summer novelties" The coal merchants
again may rejoice when they remember that
the keeping up of roaring fires in May and
June this year has been, under stress Of
weather, by no means. uncommon, and the
umbrella manufacturers may congratulate
themselves on the long series Of sloppy vic
tories achieved by Jupiter Pluyins over the
''Lord Of the Silver Bow" Still tailors
and dreSSmakers have had little reason to
Dt plcdSGu W III q SuullLGi uI AlAC nclkilb VI
which gentlemen were fain to walk abroad
in last winters ulsters, and laGies, instead
of appearing in those radiant and diapha-
nous costumes which Mr.. Absolon and Mr..
Tissot paint so deftly, have crept to and
from their carriages clad in Water-proOfs or
in fur-lined mantles when they have muster
ed up courage enough to go shopping. The
beneicent fates, on the other hand, rarely
shut one door without opening another.
Amid all the social woes with which We
have been afflicted there has been in many
directions compensation. Those spirited
and skilful confeeuoners who minister to
the comforts of residents and visitors must
have done on the whole remarkably well,
and the worthy West-eBd butcher might
Join hands with the estimable WeSt-end
fishmonger in gratitude at the close of Il
season during which, despite many de-
pressing circumstances, their commodities
have been in considerable demand. The
position of the green grocer has been most
pitiabIe, for, owing to the absence OF sun
shine and the superfuity of rain, he has
scarcely anything to sell except Water-sst-
urated potatoes, insipid Strawberries, puny
peas, and cherries composed mainly of
stalks, skins and stones. The fiOrlsts-es-
peciaily those with large command of
eonserVatories-are less to be cOmmiserated.
Their profits this season should have been
very big indeed. The modern love for
flowers in fashionable London Society, is
attaining the proportions of mania. A
splendid profasion of the fairest gifts Of
Flora is visible wherever society cOngre-
gates. On the hymeneal altar and on the
dinner table,. on the ballroom staircase and
in the palace yestibule, in the butt0n-hole
of the dandy and on the shoulder of beau
to, in bouquets at operas and theatres, and
en- Wreaths and crosses, the lid Of the cof-
fin, and the verge of the tomb, flowers are
universally. present. 1t is a very sweet
and tender and beautiful usage, and a re-
msrksbly good thing in the way Of business
for the fashionable florists.
London, July goth, 1879.