ft hand upon his hip and his right
caressing the neck of a small case-bottle in his bosom. I eyed him
pleasantly a moment, and, said I:

"Well met, my Union Blucher!"

"Ah!" says Villiam, pensively, "how powerful is Human Instink!"

"Explain, my Blue and Gold."

"Human Instink," says Villiam, softly, "is an involuntary tendency to
our normal condition."

"Ahem," said I, sagely, "that sounds like Seward."

"Come with me," says Villiam, gravely, "and I will show you the power
of Human Instink."

He led me quietly, my boy, to a corner of the great room, where the
guests were nearly all males, and suddenly roared out this
extraordinary question:

"Say, Johnny-y-y, how's yer do-o-org?"

The magical sound caught them unprepared, my boy, and before there was
time to remember where they were, they unanimously responded with:

"Bully!"

"Ah!" says Villiam, "that's Instink. They all were fellow-firemen last
year, and remember the language of the Departmink."

Deeply impressed with a sense of that subtle sympathy with early usages
which never leaves a man in life, I again let the hero of a hundred
battles lead the way to another corner, where fifty fair ones stood
apart in a cluster, waiting for their escorts. Then it was that Captain
Villiam Brown suddenly assumed an air of unspeakable abstraction, and
commenced humming the tune of the song:

"Bridget, tend the airy bell,
Don't you hear it tinkle?
Butcher's brought the bacon home,--
Cook it in a twinkle."

Without at all thinking or knowing why they were doing so, my boy,
two-thirds of those fair ones took up the tune at the first note and
hummed it through!

"The fair sect," says Villiam, cautiously, "once heard its mother sing
that song, as she had learned it in her native palace; and has the
Instink to remember it."

Thus, taking new and beautiful lessons in the ever-fresh volume of
animate nature, we sauntered into the ballroom, where our Honest Abe
and his lady were viewing the performances from a pair of handsome
elevated chairs. Ay, sir: handsome (!) chairs; and that, too, when many
an honest poor man in the land has not a single chair with a gilt back
to rest upon. Thus are we drifting toward (start not!)--yes sir and
madam, toward--Royalty!! Thus, too, are we incurring the highest scorn
of the old aristocracy of the capital who had not received invitations.

There was dancing of the ordinary sort in plenty; many solid men of
B