, I reached them, and promising
the hostess to send my _valet_ in the morning to make my respects, which
the present exigency would not allow me to stay to accomplish, I was
rapidly whirled homeward. I can hardly pen the details, but on the
removal of my linen, it was found--can I go on?--tumbled, and here and
there the snowy lawn confessed a small damp spot, or fleck of moisture.
Remorse and terror seized me. Medical attendance was called, and I
passed the night in a bath of attar of roses delicately medicated with
_aqua pura_. Of course, I have never again appeared at a party.

People haven't right ideas of entertainment. What entertainment is it to
stand all the evening in a set of sixteen-by-twenty parlors, jammed in
among all sorts of strange persons, and stranger perfumes, deafened with
a hubbub of senseless talk, and finally be led down to feed at a long
table where the sherry is hot, and the partridges are cold? Very
probably some boy or other across the table lets off a champagne cork
into your eyes, and the fattest men in the room _will_ tread on your
toes. One might describe such scenes of torture at length, but the
recital of human follies and miseries is not agreeable to my
sensibilities.

I dare say the reader might find himself gratified at one of my little
fetes. The editors of this journal attend them regularly, and have done
me the honor to approve of them. You enter on Twelfth avenue; a modest
door just off Nine-and-a-half street opens quietly, and you are ushered
by a polite gentleman--one of our city bank presidents, who takes this
means to increase his income--into an attiring room. Here you are
dressed by the most accomplished Schneider of the age, in your own
selections from an unequalled _repertoire_ of sartorial _chef d'ouvres_,
and your old clothes are sent home in an omnibus.

I might delight you with a description of the ball room, but the editors
have requested me to the contrary. Some secrets of gorgeous splendor
there are which are wisely concealed from the general gaze. But a floor
three hundred feet square, and walls as high as the mast of an East
Boston clipper, confer ample room for motion; and the unequalled
atmosphere of the saloon is perhaps unnecessarily refreshed by fountains
of rarest distilled waters. This is also my picture gallery, where all
mythology is exhausted by the great painters of the antique; and modern
art is thoroughly illustrated by the famous landscapes of both