right silk handkerchiefs about their necks, and they were bestrewed
with bits of gold and silver paper, and festooned with colored ribbon.
Gwynne and Isabel were quickly singled out and pelted with balls that
opened with the impact and tangled them together with the endless paper
streamers.

It was eleven o'clock before the crowd began its retreat to their
restaurants, and Gwynne and Isabel were able to make their way up to the
celebrated resort where the Hofers awaited them. They were shown to a
dressing-room where they could wash their faces, and then to the gallery
above the body of the restaurant which was divided into boxes, and
occupied by all sorts and kinds of people, including many of their
friends. In Hofer's box was a large bottle on ice and a table set for
supper. Mrs. Hofer, looking less approving than earlier in the evening,
sat half-hidden by a curtain, but her husband, in common with most of
the other people in the gallery, was throwing confetti upon his friends
below. He seized Gwynne and dragged him to the front of the box, and the
new arrival was greeted by shouts from every man, it seemed to him, that
he had met in San Francisco. The large hall with its tables of all sizes
was as densely packed as the streets had been.

"Ever see anything like this before?" demanded Hofer. He paused with a
gasp and dislodged a ball of confetti from his throat. "Look with all
your eyes, old man. There are the best and the worst--all who can pay
the price: the reformers cheek by jowl with the mayor and the Boss, by
Jove! The matron and the other kind of matron, the fair young girl who
hopes to buy a rich husband, and the sort that has to give more and take
less; the family man and his family, not a bit afraid of contamination,
enjoying himself to the limit; financiers, millionaires, corporation
bosses and curb-stone brokers, newspaper men, artists, politicians big
and little, society youths and girls severely chaperoned. See that crowd
with the queens of the Tenderloin? Ever hear what one of our local wits
said about them: 'Pity the worst of men should be named for the best of
fish!'"

Hofer, who felt it his duty as a good citizen to empty his bottle with
the rest of the world on New Year's eve, rattled on. Mrs. Hofer gave an
occasional warning cough. Like most San Francisco women of her class
there was a good deal of prudery under her gayety, and no instinct
whatever for Bohemia. She had come to the restaurant becau