Publisher's Synopsis
When Mr. Effingham determined to return home, he sent orders to his agent toprepare his town-house in New-York for his reception, intending to pass a monthor two in it, then to repair to Washington for a few weeks, at the close of its season, and to visit his country residence when the spring should fairly open. Accordingly, Eve now found herself at the head of one of the largest establishments, in thelargest American town, within an hour after she had landed from the ship.Fortunately for her, however, her father was too just to consider a wife, or adaughter, a mere upper servant, and he rightly judged that a liberal portion of hisincome should be assigned to the procuring of that higher quality of domesticservice, which can alone relieve the mistress of a household from a burthen soheavy to be borne. Unlike so many of those around him, who would spend on asingle pretending and comfortless entertainment, in which the ostentatious folly ofone contended with the ostentatious folly of another a sum that, properly directed, would introduce order and system into a family for a twelvemonth, by commandingthe time and knowledge of those whose study they had been, and who would bewilling to devote themselves to such objects, and then permit their wives anddaughters to return to the drudgery to which the sex seems doomed in thiscountry, he first bethought him of the wants of social life before he aspired to itsparade. A man of the world, Mr. Effingham possessed the requisite knowledge, anda man of justice, the requisite fairness, to permit those who depended on him somuch for their happiness, to share equitably in the good things that Providence hadso liberally bestowed on himse
