is negociation was
so well managed that before noon we all received our cards from a green
liveried youth, mounted on a very emaciated pony--the whole turn-out not
auguring flatteringly of the high sheriff's taste in equipage.

We dined with the __th, and, as customary before going to an evening
party, took the "other bottle" of claret that lies beyond the frontier of
prudence. In fact, from the lieutenant-colonel down to the newly-joined
ensign, there was not a face in the party that did not betray "signs of
the times" that boded most favourably for the mirth of the sheriff's
ball. We were so perfectly up to the mark, that our major, a Connemara
man, said, as we left the mess-room, "a liqueure glass would spoil us."

In this acme of our intellectual wealth, we started about eleven o'clock
upon every species of conveyance that chance could press into the
service. Of hackney coaches there were few--but in jingles, noddies, and
jaunting-cars, with three on a side and "one in the well," we mustered
strong--Down Barrack-street we galloped, the mob cheering us, we
laughing, and I'm afraid shouting a little, too--the watchmen springing
their rattles, as if instinctively at noise, and the whole population up
and awake, evidently entertaining a high opinion of our convivial
qualities. Our voices became gradually more decorous, however, as we
approached the more civilized quarter of the town; and with only the
slight stoppage of the procession to pick up an occasional dropper-off,
as he lapsed from the seat of a jaunting-car, we arrived at length at our
host's residence, somewhere in Sackville-street.

Had our advent conferred the order of knighthood upon the host, he could
not have received us with more "empressement." He shook us all in turn
by the hand, to the number of eight and thirty, and then presented us
seriatim to his spouse, a very bejewelled lady of some forty years--who,
what between bugles, feathers, and her turban, looked excessively like a
Chinese pagoda upon a saucer. The rooms were crowded to suffocation--the
noise awful--and the company crushing and elbowing rather a little more
than you expect where the moiety are of the softer sex. However, "on
s'habitue a tout," sayeth the proverb, and with truth, for we all so
perfectly fell in with the habits of the place, that ere half an hour,
we squeezed, ogled, leered, and drank champagne like the rest of the
corporation.

"Devilish hot work, this," said the