ng the biggest dancing-areas; but as anybody who wants to
realize it has at most only to spend the handful of dollars requisite
for a journey to London and a ticket of admission, it hasn't anything
but the charm of mere geographical inaccessibility to recommend it. But
if you must make acquaintance with the London variety of the public
ball, you will hardly find a better place for studying it than St.
James's Hall, that big, many-mouthed structure between Regent street and
Piccadilly, which with impartial alacrity, provided the hire is paid,
opens its doors to every sort of gathering--its platform occupied one
night by Joachim and Halle, the next by Jolly Nash or the Christy
Minstrels; on Wednesday, maybe, by a knot of Total Abstinence
enthusiasts, denouncing publicans as sinners; and on Thursday by the
band to which Licensed Victualers and their friends are dancing at their
annual public ball. You really want to go in? Very well. Gentlemen's
tickets, one guinea; ladies', twenty-five per cent. less--a supposed
inducement to the sordid, money-grubbing male relative or friend who has
the purse to bring them. Are the prices expressed to be inclusive of
wine? If they are, you will be poisoned with some frothy compound of
white _ordinaire_ and chemicals--a truly "excellent substitute" for
champagne--with which ingenious Cette supplies refreshment contractors
(and, alas! others) in inexhaustible abundance. If not, you will have to
disburse a sixpence every time a partner accepts your offer of a glass
of claret-cup between the dances, and half a sovereign for your bottle
of indifferent "fizz" at supper-time. This latter is about the very
worst of conceivable arrangements: it is an improper and aggravating tax
upon the man, who, as likely as not, has not bethought him of bringing
the requisite pocketful of change; while the ladies--at any rate, all
the best of them--naturally hate the idea of letting stranger partners
pay for them, and often decline refreshments all the evening in
consequence.

But now for the company. Mark the splendor of the gentlemen--the
glossiness of their hair, the velvet collars of their dress-coats, the
snowy amplitude of their wristbands, the shininess of their
patent-leather boots or steel-buckled shoes. They don't don this kind of
gear every evening, like your _blase_ Belgravian; so it is surely meet
and right that the get-up should be more elaborate and brilliant than
his when the festive occasions