It may be stale and flat but cannot be unprofitable!" Brevoort asks a friend to dine "On Thursday next at half-past four o'clock." He paints us a quaint sketch of "a little, round old gentleman, returning heel taps into decanters," at a soiree, adding: "His heart smote him at beholding the waste & riot of his dear adopted." We read of tea drinkings and coaches and his father's famous blunderbuss or "long gun" which he is presenting to Irving.

And there are other chroniclers of the times.
Lossing, the historian, quotes an anonymous friend as follows: "We thought there was a goodly display of wealth and diamonds in those days, but, God bless my soul, when I hear of the millions amassed by the Vanderbilts, Goulds, Millses, Villards and others of that sort, I realise what a poor little doughnut of a place New York was at that early period!" He goes on to speak of dinner at three--a formal dinner party at four.
The first private carriage was almost mobbed on Broadway.

Mrs.Jacob Little had "a very showy carriage lined with rose colour and a darky coachman in blue livery." Mr.and Mrs.Henry Brevoort's house stood on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Ninth Street--it is now occupied by the Charles de Rhams.
And it chanced to be the scene of a certain very pretty little romance which can scarcely be passed over here.
New York, as a matter of course, copied her fashionable standards from older lands.

While Manhattan society was by no means a supine and merely imitative affair, the country was too new not to cling a bit to English and French formalities.

The great ladies of the day made something of a point of their "imported amusements" as having a specific claim on fashionable favour.