thly-cold implacability of
the commonest street-walkers--those in fact who glory in their shame, and
whose very contact is vile to anything with a spark of healthy moral or
physical life in it. If, indeed, they had lain off their sickly flesh
with their masks, and gone grinning and rattling round the brilliant hall
in their skeletons, the transformation could not have chilled your
unsuspecting man with a keener horror. But it is safe to say the
unsuspecting were few indeed.

"At two o'clock this curious spectacle was at its height. All about the
Institute, and on the stairs, and in the cloak-rooms, and through the
narrow, tortuous passages leading to the stage dressing-rooms were vile
tableaus of inflamed women and tipsy men, bandying brutality and
obscenity. The animal was now in full possession of its faculties. But,
just as the orgie is bursting into the last stage--a free fight--when the
poor creatures in their hired costumes are ready to grovel in the last
half-oblivious scenes, the musicians rattle off 'Home, Sweet Home,' with
a strange, hurried irony, and the managers, with the same haste, turn off
the gas of the main chandelier, and the _Bal d'Opera_ is at an end."

VIII. PERSONALS.

The first column of one of the most prominent daily newspapers, which is
taken in many respectable families of the city, and which claims to be at
the head of American journalism, bears the above heading, and there is
also a personal column in a prominent Sunday paper, which is also read by
many respectable people. Very many persons are inclined to smile at
these communications, and are far from supposing that these journals are
making themselves the mediums through which assignations and burglaries,
and almost every disreputable enterprise are arranged and carried on.
Yet, such is the fact. Many of these advertisements are inserted by
notorious roues, and others are from women of the town. Women wishing to
meet their lovers, or men their mistresses, use these personal columns.

Respectable women have much to annoy them in the street conveyances, and
at the places of amusement. If a lady allows her face to wear a pleasant
expression while glancing by the merest chance at a man, she is very apt
to find some such personal as the following addressed to her in the next
morning's issue of the paper referred to:

THIRD AVENUE CAR, DOWN TOWN YESTERDAY morning; young lady in black, who
noticed gent opposite, who endeavor