lding
that has been going on of late in fashionable London, it has become
quite a recognized institution of these last few seasons; and it
certainly saves the ball-giver a world of trouble. There stand plenty of
newly-built first-class mansions in Belgravia that have not yet found
tenants, thoroughly finished off, externally and internally, so far as
floors and doors and windows and staircases go, but of course entirely
unfurnished. One of these is selected and hired (at a cost that would
make some people gasp) for the determined evening. An upholsterer is
turned in to put up temporary mirrors, chandeliers and curtains, and lay
down temporary carpets; a florist, following, covers bare mantelpieces
with captivating layers of cut-roses, ferns and mosses, and empties a
whole conservatoryful of plants and flowers into halls and passages;
essential Gunter, always equal to any accumulation of occasions, sends
in the conventional foods and drinks, and a competent staff of waiters
to dispense them; from equally essential and omnipresent Coote and
Tinney's comes a detachment of competent musicians; and hey, presto! the
empty house bursts into light and life and music, and, exulting in its
Cinderella finery, welcomes the guests with all the air of an
establishment that has been accustomed to this kind of thing for years.

It is not always an easy matter to time one's arrival at a private ball
quite satisfactorily. The old hands have of course certain general rules
to go by: for instance, if the invitation-card has borne the words
"Small and early" in one corner, that dancing may be expected to begin
by eleven o'clock or thereabouts; but in the absence of any such guide
it is almost impossible to predict with accuracy the time when arrivals
will set in; and so one oftentimes falls into the Scylla of
over-lateness in anxiety to steer clear of the Charybdis of
over-earliness, or _vice versa_. I call to mind a ball at the close of
last season to which I went expressly to meet certain friends, and
thought to have hit off the happy mean by entering the ball-room just
twenty minutes before midnight; but, lo! the musicians had not yet
taken possession of their corner, and sofas and chairs were but sparsely
occupied by some couple of dozen specimens of that portion of the fair
sex who in outward seeming not attractive, for dancing purposes, to the
frivolous male, yet for some inscrutable reason always put in the
earliest appearances in ba