MY NEXT MOTHER.
We then drove home. My mother's name was Garafelina Shoppard. They
were a very vulgar, purse-proud, stuck-up people. My little mother was
all the time talking to me about money, and making a show. We went
to a party one night. My mother's mother, (my _grandmother_) did not
know how to dress in good taste at all. She was dressed in a black
and yellow changeable silk, and my mother was dressed in a green and
orange, with a wreath of red roses in her hair. My grandmother tried
to talk French, but she mispronounced every word. That evening, when
any one was introduced, she would ask them if they could "_barley
vouse frog's hay_,"--and at supper, she said that she would take
"_chockalat_," it was such a "_soul stirring beverage_." She took ice
cream, and said that "she always took ice cream, _bekase_ she thought
it cooled her _heterogeneous and amalgamated system_; besides, it
was the merry month of _Jew-win_." At home, when we had company, she
always talked so. We had some pretty high folks, for she had worked
her way into the upper ten. One evening Sir Thomas Fitz-Patrick came
to see her. At tea, she said, "Dear Sir, let me persuade you to take
one _airy_ mouthful of '_fram boyses_,' or else do condescend to taste
some '_frommage_;' it is quite new, my Lord, and I hope it will please
your '_diddle de tory_,' taste." After tea, she said, "Oh! My Lord,
don't you perfectly adore Byron and Shakspeare? I think that one is so
'_cherubimical_,' and the other so '_seraphical_.' Don't you recollect
that passage from 'Macbeth,' in act second, and scene second, 'Hark,
who lies i' the second chamber;' and in Hamlet's '_solukey_' in scene
fifth, act first, 'Alas! poor ghost?'" My little mother used to prink
before the glass, and hold me up to see how handsome I was, till I was
very tired of looking at myself. My mother never let me do any sewing,
for fear I should spoil my fingers, and thus I passed a very idle life.
I could not read much, as my mother was afraid that I would hurt my
eyes. One day my mother said, that her grandmother was coming to live
with us, and also her aunt, who was not married. She said that she
hated old maids, though they had got to come; but she would not speak
to them. I was very sorry indeed to hear this.