At the time, however, I gave it little thought, but partook with what
appetite I might of the choice and delicate repast provided for me, in
this truly princely hotel, whose fame I discovered had not been
over-trumpeted. On my previous visits to New York, the Astor House had
been unfinished, and had made in its completion a new era certainly in
the "tavern-life" of that inhospitable city of publicans. When the
delicious coffee and snowy bread, the eggs of milky freshness, the
golden butter, the savory rice-birds, the appetizing fish, had each and
all been merely tasted and dismissed, and the exquisite China, in which
the breakfast was served, duly marveled at as an unprecedented
extravagance on the part even of John Jacob Astor, Mrs. Clayton came to
me with kindly offers of assistance in the performance of my toilet,
still a matter of difficulty in my feeble hands.
My long hair, yet tangled and clogged with sea-water, was to be at last
unbound and thoroughly combed, cleansed, and oiled, so that the black
and glossy braids, that had been my chief personal pride, might again be
wound about my head in the old classic fashion.
Then came the bath, with its reviving, rehabilitating process, and
lastly I assumed with the docility of a baby or a pauper the clean and
fragrant linen and simple wrapper that had been mysteriously provided
for me by the Lady Anastasia again, I could not doubt.
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