MOVEMENTS OF THE PRINCE; He Visits Gen. Scott, Brady’s Gallery, Barnum’s Museum, and Ball, Black & Co.’s Jewelry Store (10/15/1860)

New York Times - Times Machine ^ | 10/15/1860

[Homer_J_Simpson]

A great ball, like a great battle, is not to be dismissed with the telegraphic bulletins of the next morning. We have the Duke of Wellington's authority for comparing the one to the other, and for asserting that the illustrious commander, who shrank from the task of attempting to describe the conflict of Waterloo, would have hesitated over a chronicle of the Duchess of Richmond's dance of the night before, at Brussels. To the one case, as in the other, we only adapt the words of the Iron Duke, and say that the fate of each "depends upon the most trifling and unforeseen incidents." Certainly the Prince of Wales' Ball at the Academy on Friday night illustrated this truth, for though the "breakdown" with which it opened instead of a quadrille was "trilling," in so far that nobody suffered any serious detriment either in person or toilette, and must have been "unforeseen" by everybody except the carpenter who built a floor with unbraced beams four feet apart, yet it unquestionably decided the fate of the entertainment, and threw the gloom of a fiasco over the whole evening. Indeed, but for the Duke of Newcastle, it would probably have reduced the ball of Friday to the condition of "Hamlet" without the part of the Prince, and given the eager thousands of the New-York elite such a Barmecide feast as was offered next day by the enterprising ULLMAN to the uninvited myriads of our population. For the Prince of Wales was decidedly disposed to retreat from the scene, no doubt, having been thoroughly inoculated with the notion that we Americans act on Mr. HAWTHORNE's theory, and build in tents, with no eye to anything beyond the immediate hour, and no care for the limbs and lives of our fellow-creatures.

[Homer_J_Simpson]

Free Republic University, Department of History presents U.S. History, 1855-1860: Seminar and Discussion Forum
Bleeding Kansas, Dred Scott, Lincoln-Douglas, Harper’s Ferry, the election of 1860, secession – all the events leading up to the Civil War, as seen through news reports of the time and later historical accounts

First session: November 21, 2015. Last date to add: Sometime in the future.
Reading: Self-assigned. Recommendations made and welcomed.

Posting history, in reverse order

To add this class to or drop it from your schedule notify Admissions and Records (Attn: Homer_J_Simpson) by reply or freepmail.

Link to previous New York Times thread

[Homer_J_Simpson]

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[Homer_J_Simpson]

Movements of the Prince: He Visits Gen. Scott, Brady’s Gallery, Barnum’s Museum, and Ball, Black & Co.’s Jewelry Store – 2-7

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