enches prayed fervently, and entered into
conversation with them one by one. Two or three others dropped in, and
there was much praying and groaning, but evidently much sincerity. And
so with at least some new impressions for good, some cheering hopeful
words to take them on in the New Year, those few waifs and strays passed
out into the darkness, to retain, let it be hoped, some at least of the
better influences which were brought to bear upon them in that brighter
epoch in their darkened lives when Ned Wright's invitation gathered them
to the Thieves' Supper.

CHAPTER V.

A LUNATIC BALL.

One half of the world believes the other half to be mad; and who shall
decide which moiety is right, the reputed lunatics or the supposed sane,
since neither party can be unprejudiced in the matter? At present the
minority believe that it is a mere matter of numbers, and that if
intellect carried the day, and right were not overborne by might, the
position of parties would be exactly reversed. The dilemma forced itself
strongly on my consciousness for a solution when I attended the annual
ball at Hanwell Lunatic Asylum. The prevailing opinion inside the walls
was that the majority of madmen lay outside, and that the most
hopelessly insane people in all the world were the officers immediately
concerned in the management of the establishment itself.

It was a damp, muggy January evening when I journeyed to this suburban
retreat. It rained dismally, and the wind nearly blew the porter out of
his lodge as he obeyed our summons at the Dantesque portal of the
institution, in passing behind which so many had literally abandoned
hope. I tried to fancy how it would feel if one were really being
consigned to that receptacle by interested relatives, as we read in
three-volume novels; but it was no use. I was one of a merry company on
that occasion. The officials of Hanwell Asylum had been a little shy of
being handed down to fame; so I adopted the ruse of getting into Herr
Gustav Kuester's corps of fiddlers for the occasion. However, I must in
fairness add that the committee during the evening withdrew the taboo
they had formerly placed on my writing. I was free to immortalize them;
and my fiddling was thenceforth a work of supererogation.

High jinks commenced at the early hour of six; and long before that time
we had deposited our instruments in the Bazaar, as the ball-room is
somewhat incongruously called, and were threading the