I only wish that my descriptive
powers would enable me to throw off a picture of the scene at a sunny
noontide, individualizing each character with a touch: the great people
alighting from their carriages at the principal shop-doors; the elderly
ladies and infirm Indian officers drawn along in Bath-chairs; the
comely, rather than pretty, English girls, with their deep, healthy
bloom, which an American taste is apt to deem fitter for a milkmaid than
for a lady; the moustached gentlemen with frogged surtouts and a
military air; the nursemaids and chubby children, but no chubbier than
our own, and scampering on slenderer legs; the sturdy figure of John
Bull in all varieties and of all ages, but ever with the stamp of
authenticity somewhere about him.
To say the truth, I have been holding the pen over my paper, purposing
to write a descriptive paragraph or two about the throng on the
principal Parade of Leamington, so arranging it as to present a sketch
of the British out-of-door aspect on a morning walk of gentility; but I
find no personages quite sufficiently distinct and individual in my
memory to supply the materials of such a panorama. Oddly enough, the
only figure that comes fairly forth to my mind's eye is that of a
dowager, one of hundreds whom I used to marvel at, all over England, but
who have scarcely a representative among our own ladies of autumnal
life, so thin, careworn, and frail, as age usually makes the latter.
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