Note 49 — JOURNAL. (continued 3)

I think it has not been my good fortune, in more than six instances, during my residence in this country, to find ladies "at home" in the morning. The first reason for this is, the total impossibility of having a housekeeper; the American servants steadfastly refusing to obey two mistresses; the being subservient to any appears, indeed, a dreadful hardship to them. Of course this compels the lady of the house to enter into all those minute daily details, which with us devolve upon the superintendent servant, and she is thus condemned, at least for some part of the morning, to the store-room or the kitchen. In consequence of this, her toilet is seldom completed until about to take her morning promenade; and I have been a good deal surprised, more than once, at being told, when I called, that "the ladies were dressing, but would be down immediately." This is French; the disorderly slouching about half the morning in a careless undress being, unluckily, quite compatible with that exquisite niceness of appearance with which the Parisian ladies edify their streets so much, and their homes so little. Another very disagreeable result of this arrangement is, that when you are admitted into a house in the morning, the rooms appear as if they never were used: there are no books lying about, no work-tables covered with evidences of constant use, and if there is a piano, it is generally closed; the whole giving one an uninhabited feel that is extremely uncomfortable. As to a morning lounge in a lady's boudoir, or a gentleman's library, the thing's unheard of; to be sure there are no loungers, where every man is tied to a counting-house from morning till night; and therefore no occasion for those very pleasant sanctums devoted to gossiping, political, literary, and scandalous.