Page:A hairdresser's experience in high life.djvu/211

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IN HIGH LIFE.
213

there are several ladies who do nothing but run after persons who dress elegantly, or know some person in the city who has a high position, and after running round picking up diamonds, get picked up themselves. That great lady married a poor man, and left him to wait on an old rich man. Her first husband having died, she married the old man on his sick bed, and he left all his money to her on condition that she would let her children take his name. The ladies picked her up and ran away with her; but finding the load too heavy, they fainted on the way, and dropped her. When she visits the city now, she stops at the Spencer House, for she has been found out at the Burnet House."

During the stay of Kossuth at the Burnet House, he made many speeches, one of which was in the drawing-room. There were a number of people assembled to hear all his speeches; but it seemed as if there was even more of a crowd than usual to hear this one. He spoke, as usual, on the oppression of the Hungarians, and at the close of every sentence there was a cheer. The gallery outside was crowded, the stairways were crowded, and those who could not get in were trying to look over the heads of others. Ladies were standing on chairs here and there through the drawing-room, and some ladies of notoriety in our city actually stood upon a thousand-dollar piano.

At this very time, when there was so much sympathy excited for the oppressed Hungarians, there was, in the very midst of our city, a man being tried for running away from cruel bondage and oppression, and endeavoring to escape to the land of liberty. He was caught, tried, and sent back to his cruel bondage—