This is one of those occasions on which the Dives of this sumptuous palace, Mr. Goldrich, intends to celebrate his birthday; and as he can’t tell where he was born, nor can he show any genuine images of his ancestry, (except that he came down a scion from the great “Anglo-Saxon race,”) he is determined to make amends for this calamity he could not help, and the want of taste in his father, whoever he was, by spending an ordinary fortune in the present celebration, and thus combine the splendors of all the possible past anniversaries of his birth in one grand, unrivalled celebration to-day.

   “And here, at once, the glittering saloon
    Bursts on the sight, boundless and bright as noon.”

The select music of splendid bands now announced the movements of guests towards the grand banquet room.  In pairs they enter, and singular; the short procession is now at an end, and the places are filled up with the scanty number of twoscore guests, male and female.

You would have supposed, from the preparation, that the inhabitants of the entire city were invited; but no, the exact number was forty, besides the members of the rich man’s family.  And this happened not by accident, or because of the penury or avarice of Mr. Goldrich, but because in the whole city there were no more than twenty families who ranked in the sphere of the “upper ten” in which “mine host” moved.  These shining figures, that you can scarcely look at without risk to your eyes from their jewelry, are the ladies who leave us in doubt which they love most to exhibit—­their charms, or the richness of their ornaments.  Among that bright array of female beauty there is missed the fair form of one who was, heretofore, an ordinary occupant of an honorable place at the family table.  It was the chair of the rosy-cheeked Alia that was unoccupied at this splendid circle.  The presiding queen of the feast, Madam Goldrich, apologized for the absence of “poor Alia,” by representing her indisposed; and at the announcement of this dispiriting intelligence, disappointment marked the countenances of the guests, for Alia was the brightest star that shone in that brilliant galaxy of fashion.

Being the oldest among the children of Mr. Goldrich, Alia possessed all that graceful and dignified superiority over those whom she regarded as her younger sisters, which are the acknowledged privileges of age in every well-regulated family, and which her superior talent seemed naturally to enforce.

Years rolled on, and the dear child lived in blissful ignorance of her origin and desolate condition, till the jealousy of her younger sisters excited her suspicions, and she began to mistrust the genuineness, as she felt the coldness, of that parental affection which the pretended authors of her existence so long counterfeited.  During many months, if not years, these suspicions preyed on the poor girl’s mind; and though she never dared to mention them to any save old Judy, the