We had to
consent to accept of her hospitalities. In an hour's time, all were
established, and I believe all were at home.
I shall not dwell on the happiness that succeeded. We were all too
young to go to parties, and, I might almost add, New York itself was
too young to have any; but in the last I should have been mistaken,
though there were not as many _children's_ balls in 1799,
perhaps, after allowing for the difference in population, as there are
to-day. If too young to be company, we were not too young to see
sights. I sometimes laugh as I remember what these were at that
time. There was such a museum as would now be thought lightly of in a
western city of fifteen or twenty years' growth--a circus kept by a
man of the name of Ricketts--the theatre in John street, a very modest
Thespian edifice--and a lion, I mean literally the beast, that was
kept in a cage quite out of town, that his roaring might not disturb
people, somewhere near the spot where the _triangle_ that is
called Franklin _Square_ now is. All these we saw, even to the
theatre; good, indulgent Mr. Hardinge seeing no harm in letting us go
thither under the charge of Mrs. Bradfort. I shall never forget the
ecstasy of that night! The novelty was quite as great to Rupert and
myself as it was to the girls; for, though we had been to China, we
had never been to the play.
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