er so many cannon were burning to let off
fire; all the ships would have burst into a storm of flags at the first
gun. People couldn't but just keep from shouting every time they met
each other. But the young man didn't come. He hasn't come yet, and all
the enthusiasm is burning down to cinders and ashes. When he does come,
I'm afraid it'll be like putting a mess of apples into an oven after the
pan of baked pork and beans has been drawn out--half roasted, and hard
at the core when you cut 'em.

This is a great country, my friends--in fact, very extensive--but you
can't wake it up to an earthquake of enthusiasm about the same person
more than once. That prince had better have struck when the iron was
red-hot. He didn't, and so I can't tell you anything about him, except
that he isn't more at sea than the rest of us. When he does come, depend
upon it, there will be an uprising among the females of this great city;
and foremost of her sex will be your representative, faithful to her
trust, and ready, with a modest helping hand, to lead this young person
into the paths of propriety.

He has come at last, but the bitter-sweet of hope and fear has been
given us as daily food for two weeks past, and the wormwood of ceaseless
apprehension took the place of the yellow berries, and nightshade
darkness settled down upon us. Lovely young girls cried over their
ball-dresses of illusion, and wondered if _their_ hopes would thin off
into the same slimpsy nothingness. Middle-aged ladies, whose hair needs
no powder, and whose teeth never ache, began to falter in the dancing
steps practised in the private recesses of their own palatial homes,
and wondered if their joints were to be twisted and racked into new-born
graces, only to settle down into rusty stiffness again without having
fascinated the Russian soul out of that princely bosom.

Of course it is right and proper that an opportunity to study the
antiquities of a nation should be offered to every potentate and prince
that honors our Republican shores by setting his high-born foot upon
them, and it is highly proper that first-class specimens should be in
readiness the moment he enters a ball-room. That is what people tell me
has always been the custom at balls given to princes, and it isn't
likely that new rules are to be laid down for the benefit of a lot of
girls, anyhow. Governors and mayors are not often so young as they have
been. As a general thing, their wives are not tro