me; and so She, even if she gives up
her programme to be marked with the engagement, probably gets it back
just scrawled with some initials; while He is driven to the expedient of
entering on his programme some brief memorandum of dress or
ornament--"blue and roses," "pearls," or the like--which may or may not
serve to recall to him each fair personality in turn. Sisters, though,
are apt to upset this descriptive arrangement by their provoking habit
of going about in identical costumes. Some luckless wight has taken a
satisfactory note of the dress and general appearance of a Miss
Unknown, and then, horror! half an hour afterward he discovers that
there are _two_ wearers of such dress in the room, each the very ditto
of the other. There is only one way out of it: when the destined dance
arrives he must go boldly up to one of them with the usual "My dance, I
believe?" For there's, at any rate, an even chance of his being right;
while, at worst, if she answers, "I think not," his doubt is at once
solved in favor of the other sister.

In the dances themselves there is not much variety. Society knows of
four only--two "squares," quadrille and Lancers, and two "round," waltz
and galop. Of these, waltzes are the most, and quadrilles the least,
popular, it being of course understood that "round" dances occupy
considerably more than half of every programme. Still, "squares" are not
likely ever actually to disappear. There is a certain undeniable utility
about them. They give breathing-times between waltz and galop; a share
in the amusement of the evening to people who are too old or too
ponderous, or otherwise unsuited for the whirling "rounds;" and scope
for that pleasant institution, "sitting out," which, as everybody knows,
consists in ostensibly engaging a partner for a "square," and then,
instead of dancing it, deliberately spending the time in a quiet
sit-down chat. "Dancing it," I see I have written, but truly it is only
by courtesy that the word can be applied to a private-ball quadrille, in
which nobody dreams of doing steps or attending to time, and the
conventional ideal is reached by a sort of unconcerned-looking saunter,
distantly suggestive of the formulated movements of the figures. But if
you can't dance too ill for the "squares," on the other hand you can't
dance too well for the "rounds," especially waltzes. All thorough-going
dancers will now have nothing but the _valse a trois temps_, which
requires both par