Fashionable Display of Wealth Compared to Belshazzar's Feast
Perhaps some of those ancient nations or individuals which are set forth in the inspired record as objects of God's signal displeasure, went further in impiety and folly than the person described below; but it seems hardly necessary for one to go further to cause his aversion to be manifested in as marked a manner:— “The papers give an account of a fashionable lady, the wife of a New York banker, who appeared at a fancy dress ball recently as Capital. She was literally loaded down with wealth. The dress, cut en train, was covered on the skirt, so as to make it appear one piece, with $100 and $500 bills. The waist and sleeves were $1,000 bonds sewed in, and her fingers and ears blazed with diamonds as large as peas. The tiara was said to have been worth $80,000, and the total value of the notes and diamonds on her person was $200,000. The pages carried her train, and watched lest the jewelry and greenbacks should roll or fall to the floor. This sounds very much like the narrative of Belshazzar's feast given to a thousand of his lords, when the ‘Mene, mene tekel upharsin,’ was written by the finger of God on the palace wall. Oh! that this nation may speedily bow in humility before God, ere his wrath be kindled against us for our impious sins.”