ften thought in
the midst of a song, or the very thick of a ball-room, can people prefer
this to a book and a sofa, and a dear, dear cigar-box, from thy stores,
O charming Mariana Woodville! Deprived of my favorite plant, I grew sick
in mind and body, moody, sarcastic, and discontented.

Such a state of things could not long continue, nor could Miss M'Alister
continue to have much attachment for such a sullen, ill-conditioned
creature as I then was. She used to make me wild with her wit and her
sarcasm, nor have I ever possessed the readiness to parry or reply
to those fine points of woman's wit, and she treated me the more
mercilessly as she saw that I could not resist her.

Well, the polite reader must remember a great fete that was given at
B---- House, some years back, in honor of his Highness the Hereditary
Prince of Kalbsbraten-Pumpernickel, who was then in London on a visit to
his illustrious relatives. It was a fancy ball, and the poems of Scott
being at that time all the fashion, Mary was to appear in the character
of the "Lady of the Lake," old M'Alister making a very tall and
severe-looking harper; Dawdley, a most insignificant Fitzjames; and your
humble servant a stalwart manly Roderick Dhu. We were to meet at B----
House at twelve o'clock, and as I had no fancy to drive through the town
in my cab dressed in a kilt and philibeg, I agreed to take a seat in
Dawdley's carriage, and to dress at his house in May Fair. At eleven
I left a very pleasant bachelors' party, growling to quit them and the
honest, jovial claret-bottle, in order to scrape and cut capers like a
harlequin from the theatre. When I arrived at Dawdley's, I mounted to a
dressing-room, and began to array myself in my cursed costume.

The art of costuming was by no means so well understood in those days
as it has been since, and mine was out of all correctness. I was made
to sport an enormous plume of black ostrich-feathers, such as never was
worn by any Highland chief, and had a huge tiger-skin sporran to dangle
like an apron before innumerable yards of plaid petticoat. The tartan
cloak was outrageously hot and voluminous; it was the dog-days, and
all these things I was condemned to wear in the midst of a crowd of a
thousand people!

Dawdley sent up word, as I was dressing, that his dress had not arrived,
and he took my cab and drove off in a rage to his tailor.

There was no hurry, I thought, to make a fool of myself; so having put
on a pai