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inform them that, in contrast to other shops, here the prices were fixed. No one seemed to mind; the cash registers jingled as customers spent more than $15,000 a day. Little did anyone know that one day A. T. Stewart’s would borrow money from Hetty.
    Outside, a promenade of ladies in French bonnets and rich silk dresses under their cloaks strolled by, more elegant than those seen in a week in Hyde Park, said an English visitor. Businessmen, more frantic to make money than businessmen anywhere else in the world, rushed past at a dizzying pace, slipping in the slush of mud on the cobblestone streets. Sidestepping men who carried sandwich-board signs on their backs, the crowd tried to avoid the flood of pamphlets and fliers pushed into their hands. In the shop windows, handwritten notices advertised goods, and posters shouted the arrival of new businesses and theatrical performances. Everywhere the noise of carts and horses and angry drivers shattered the air.
    If downtown was crowded with shoppers, far uptown at the edge of the city, behind the Croton Reservoir at Fortieth Street and Fifth Avenue, the streets were packed with sightseers. The Crystal Palace, all glass and iron, beckoned visitors to reach its heights, its steam-powered elevator, invented by Mr. Otis, ready to loft them to the top for spectacular views of the city. At night, its mass of lights glowed like lanterns with Oriental elegance. In the daytime, guests gazed at the finest French tapestries and porcelains and English silver and earthenware, along with Italian, Dutch, and German treasures. A pale copy of the Crystal Palace in London, it nonetheless showed Americans the miracles of art, science, and mechanics. The huge display—“a modern wonder,” said Whitman—gave millions of people a glimpse of the future.
    After they lunched with husbands and children, society ladies were off in their carriages again on the obligatory round of calls. For a quick stop at one house, they held their long skirts and climbed the steep steps to the front door, nodded to the parlor maid who answered, and advancing no farther than the vestibule, dropped an engraved card on the silver tray, then left. Butat the homes of friends or neighbors like the Tredwells, they presented their card and asked to see the lady of the house. A quick glimpse in the hall mirror to check their hair, and they were ushered into the front parlor. While they sat on the new French sofa waiting for their hostess to come down, they took in the furnishings of the room. Their eyes darted from the whale-oil lamps on the marble mantel over the fireplace to the bronze gas chandelier hanging from the high ceiling, to the square piano and the French carpetwoven to look like Roman frescoes. A ten-minute chat with their friend, some good gossip, a critique of the nine-course dinner party they attended the night before, and they were off again in their carriages. A few blocks away they stopped for tea with a dowager, a chance for the young debutante to say a few clever words; a nod from their hostess could only help.
    In the evenings, they attended theaters such as Wallack’s on Broadway and chuckled at Lester Wallack, starring in the new English comedy
The Bachelor of Arts
, or they went for a more thought-provoking production at the National Theater, where
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
was playing to packed houses, and every night the audience sobbed over Little Eva’s plight. At the Broadway Tabernacle, Theodore Eisfeld conducted the Philharmonic Society, and at Metropolitan Hall or the Astor Opera House the sopranos sang while audience members pulled out their opera glasses and spied on one another.
    The only thing New Yorkers enjoyed more than making money was dancing, and the most important events were the season’s parties, dances, and balls. Hetty’s cousin William, just three years older, might accompany her, but his mother or his sister always chaperoned, while their husbands sometimes stayed home.
    As