She
takes in plain sewing when she can get any, and picks up a trifle about
the street by means of her voice, which, she says, was once sweet, but
has now been injured by the poorness of her living. She is a pale woman,
with black eyes, Fanny says, and may have been pretty once, but is not so
now. It seems very strange, that with such a gift of Heaven, so
cultivated, too, as her voice is, making even an unsusceptible heart
vibrate like a harp-string, she should not have had an engagement among
the hundred theatres and singing-rooms of London; that she should throw
away her melody in the streets for the mere chance of a penury, when
sounds not a hundredth part so sweet are worth from other lips purses of
gold.
October 5th.--It rained almost all day on Wednesday, so that I did not go
out till late in the afternoon, and then only took a stroll along Oxford
Street and Holborn, and back through Fleet Street and the Strand.
Yesterday, at a little after ten, I went to the ambassador's to get my
wife's passport for Lisbon. While I was talking with the clerk,
Mr. ------ made his appearance in a dressing-gown, with a morning
cheerfulness and alacrity in his manner. He was going to Liverpool with
his niece, who returns to America by the steamer of Saturday. She has
had a good deal of success in society here; being pretty enough to be
remarked among English women, and with cool, self-possessed, frank, and
quiet manners, which look very like the highest breeding.
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