r to the inner apartments of the harem. We found the
private apartments of the seraglio, like so many others I visited all
over the East, superbly magnificent in the display of gold and jewels,
in costly carpets and exquisite hangings, in the most lavish exhibition
of pictures, mirrors, statuettes and bijouterie generally. There were
glowing tints and warm, rich colors, but all was sensuous: wealth and
splendor were everywhere visible, but neither modesty nor true womanly
refinement.

The sultan afterward entertained us by the exhibition of a curious
collection of monkeys and apes. Some were of huge proportions, full four
feet in height, and looking as fierce as if just captured from their
native jungles, while the tiny marmosets were scarcely eight inches
long. The orang-outangs and long-armed apes had been trained to go
through a variety of military exercises; and when one of us expressed
surprise at their seeming intelligence, the sultan said gravely, "They
are as really _men_ as you and I, and have the power of speech if _they
chose to exercise it_. They do not talk, because they are unwilling to
work and be made slaves of." This strange theory is generally believed
by the Malays, in whose language _orang-outang_ is simply "_man_ of the
woods."

FANNIE R. FEUDGE.

LONDON BALLS

BY A LONDONER.

How London balls came to be what, in this latter half of the nineteenth
century, they are--by what process of development or natural or
artificial selection they acquired their present characteristics, and
where and when their congregation of frequenters picked up their current
ritual--are matters which I, for one, am content to leave to the
Dryasdusts of social history. The existing phase of the subject affords
phenomena enough and to spare to gossip about, without delving into the
rubbish-heaps of the past.

Well, of course there are different sorts of London balls, and
indifferent sorts, too, for that matter. It would be a hopeless and
endless task to try to classify their various species accurately; and
this paper isn't meant for scientific readers, who are hereby solemnly
warned off frivolous ground; so let us just mark out the field into
three broad divisions--the Public, the Semi-Public and the Private
Ball--and take a look at each successively.

About the public ball I do not intend to say much. Take the whole year
round, it perhaps gets together the biggest crowds, merely from the fact
of its affecti