-covered, impracticable ice given up to miscellaneous
loafers. Even so it is with the wide area of the Egyptian Hall when the
ball is in full swing. The waltzers clear four or five ever-shifting
rings for themselves, in each of which a dozen to twenty couples go
round and round, colliding, jostling and (righteously enough)
eliminating the vagrant do-nothings who in aimless perambulation are for
ever trenching upon the dancers' ground. For which reprehensible
proceeding, mind, there is positively no excuse at the Mansion House,
where the range of drawing-rooms and vestibule is ample enough to
accommodate without difficulty the largest numbers that ever come
together there. There is always the Long Parlor, too, to resort to,
where, at about the longest buffet to be found in Christendom, an army
of waiters are assiduous all the evening through in dispensing tea,
coffee, ices, cakes, claret- and champagne-cups, fruit, and suchlike
light refections to all comers. Pretty well thronged the parlor is, too,
in the intervals between the dances, until between midnight and 1 A. M.,
when it begins to be comparatively deserted. The reason? Follow that
couple hurrying to a far corner of the vestibule, and you will soon see
the reason. Up a flight of stairs we follow to the first floor, to find
ourselves at the end of a long _queue_ of couples, all patiently waiting
with faces turned toward a doorway barred by two authoritative footmen.
Inside that doorway is--Supper, a word of substantial import to the
genuine London citizen; and it is with a keen practical appreciation of
its meaning that these good folk are gathered here, content to wait
their turn till those guardians of the doorway, letting down the barrier
of their arms, shall permit them to pass into the supper-room. Truly an
instructive and elevating sight! Still, people who dance, and still more
devoted matrons who chaperon, need and deserve to be fed, and when one
comes to deal with six or seven hundred feeders, it is perhaps necessary
to be somewhat methodical and systematic about it; so possibly the
_queue_ is inevitable, and not greatly to be sneered at.

The scene inside the supper-room may be dismissed with a very few words.
Narrowish tables, with a background of waiters, line all four sides,
leaving the centre space for the guests. No seats: every couple occupy
the first open standing room they can find at a table, and sup on
whatever viands happen to be opposite them. M