Waterbury evening Democrat., 1888-10-22
Summer Days at Newport.
. By LUOY II. HOOPER.
CCopyright.1 PART I.

1 am sitting today at the window of @
 friends villa in Newport. %t Is an August
 day, and the morning is right and cloud
 less, with sky all gold and azure and sea
 all sapphire and silver. But within an hour
 an easterly wind has sprung up, and on its
 soft wings has come the sea mist, which, like
 a mighty enchanter, has plotted out ocean and sky and shore, and has shut in tho dainty
 house with a close gray wall, which hides from my gaze every vestige of the fair sum-
 mer city by the sea. It does not matter; need no bodily eyes wherewith to behold the glories of Newport, for the glories on which my inner vision may dwell belong wholly to the past. Upon the folds of that dense, dim veil memory paints with vivid and unfadinS tints another scene, reproduces the faces of other actors, awakens tmagician then, not artist only1 the sound of long silenced voices, and brings back to me that which once was Newport.
 The time is 1859; the scene the Ocean house, then glowing in renovated freshness and gay with goodly company Kerner & Birch, proprietors of the Clarendon hotel in New York, had taken the great caravansary under their charge, and their skilfful man agement had revived the waning popularity of this once world famous house. Cottages and villas and seaside palaces were compara- lively rare at Newport in those days, and on that special summer the four great hotels the Fillmore, the Bellevue, the Atlantic and the Ocean-were all crowded, but especially the last Like gigantic boa constructor, the Ocean house had engulfed its summer meal and was gorged to repletion. Beauty and fashion, wit and wisdom, gold and folly, all found their representatives in the latter days of that charming August under its spa cious roof. There were southern bellies and northern beauties, fair western girls with the gold of their native sunsets shining in their silken hair, sharp eyed east ern maidens with much science hid den under their smoothly coiled tresses; there was Mrs. James Stone, the ac- tress, with her lovely white shoulders, saucy black eyes and dainty neg retrousse, there was the Elfn Planet-so called in the theat- rical worid-fair, pure, gentle Alice Boudi- not, with her keen eyed actor-author hus- band; there was GaZZaniga, tragic queen, whose voice was but the gilded framework for the passionate pictures of her acting; there was Frezzolini, passee and aging, 1t is true, but still tall and handsome and regal looking, a splendid lamp whose flame of song had been extinguished forever. There, too, came women who had climbed society's golden ladder to the topmost round, and wno looked down with serene indifference on the struggling throng below; thero were others wlo had placed one foot on the first shining round of that self same ladder, and who had vowed in their secret souls to reach the summit ere many years had fled. Among the throng might be seen Paul Morphy, the young chess king, with the first flush of his triumph still on his boyish cheek, and wear ing his newly won laurels with modest grace. Either came politician and gambler, planter and merchant. Your eyes passed from the fine head and dark bright eyes of the Know Nothing mayor of Baltimore, to rest on the coarsely handsome features and keen orbs of Jim Sylva, the proprietor of a so called club house, not fifty miles away. It was gay multitude, if a mixed one, yet was it less mixed in reality than in appearance. Social lines were drawn more sharply ill those days than they are now. Shoddy was unknown, nay, uninvented, and the Valenciennes trimmed skirts of Mrs. Beverly Upperten might brush the brocade train of Mrs, Bow cry Higgins, yet did each lady remain serenely unconscious of the others existence
 the one from pride and the other from pique. The rivalry of Mrs Fairbell and Mime. Nordetoile had not then shaken New port to the very foundations of its social edi- fee, and pony phaetons were things on earth of which no daring Horatia had yet dreamed in her philosophy. How long ago the date of our story seems, when even that celebrated contest Is one of the tales of O half forgotten past! Of the two rival queens, one yet reigns and fourishes a prosperous sovereign, but the 0ther-I Alas for the northern star! under what clouds in foreign skies has she not dis appeared-the brilliant planet that shed such radiance around herl
 On one particular afternoon, late in August of the season of which we have spoken the crowd of spectators and pEomenaders ill the wide but somewhat gloomy hall of the Ocean house was even larger and more brilliant than usual The ladies were looking their best, and though it was no longer the fashion to dress in the gorgeous and inappropriate style which had been then de rigueur at watering place dinners some few years before, the toilets were elegant and picturesque enough to suit even the most devoted adorer of dress and fashion. Full ball costumes with lace shaded decollete corsages were no moro to be seen, but were replaced by dresses with square cut bodiees, founced skirts and the graceful so called angel sleeves, which, flowing back full and open from the shoulder, left the white arms uncovered to display their rounded and snowy beauty. Then there were the tasteful robe dresses with founces bordered with a graceful interwoven pattern, and the basque and lace trimmed open sleeves bordered with trimming to correspond, Chignons had not yet arisen to deform and weigh down the female head; the bright dresses of the Newport belles were that year woven into cunning superstructures of plaits behind, and in front were rolled smoothly back,in the style called in other days Pompa-. dour, putin latter times a alImperatrice. Dress in-those days was graceful, becoming and de corous; no frenzied piles of Trills and bows and punches, no violent contrasting colors, no loud effects nor startling shapes, deformed the outlines of lady's figure. No masses of unkempt fuzz frizzed themselves out over her forehead, nor had she as yet learned from English oourtesans and bob tailed horses the odious fashion of hiding her brow under @ stiff, square cut fringe of hair. Her. skirts sweptsthe ground; they did not trail p yard or two behind her. Her attire was elegant, picturesque, becoming and costly [ it had several years before 1t wherein to suffer Parisian change into somethingwild: and strange Worth, Cora Pearl and the Princess Metternich were possibilities of$the future, and as yet the Tuileries andtthe Faubotrg St. Gerniain, not the Quartier Bredafnor the Rue Notre Dame de Lorette, were the quarters from whence the magnates of fash ion issued their commands to the feminine