aybe there is a certain
stony sameness about the food, a harping _ad infinitum_ on some eight or
ten hackneyed culinary ideas which one always finds where, as here, food
and drink for a great many relays of people are provided by contract;
but so long as chicken and jelly and fairly wholesome wine, with plenty
of that best of antidotal safeguards, seltzer, are obtainable, folk are
not apt to be hypercritical on such occasions.

Another staircase leads down again to the vestibule and hall, where the
crowd is by this time perceptibly thinning. Chaperons are sailing off
to the cloak-room, each followed by her brood; and the hoarse voices of
the servants and policemen outside--"Call Mrs. Thingummy's carriage,"
"Mrs. Whatshername's carriage stops the way"--penetrate almost to the
dancers' ears. Let us get our coats and hats and be off. There is an
almost amusing coolness in that open display of a saucer for the receipt
of tips on the counter at which the coats are applied for. It
prosaically recalls one to the fact that these magnificent flunkeys are
after all but human, and not above a regard for shillings. Next Tuesday,
mind, you must not fail to drop in for a few minutes at the lady
mayoress's afternoon "at home," in acknowledgment of your (I trust)
pleasant evening at the dance; and be sure you write your name and
address in the callers' book on the table near the entrance door, if you
wish to be remembered when the cards of invitation for the next dance
are going out.

Turn we now to a quite different phase of the ball semi-public. The Inns
of Court Rifle Volunteers--familiarly styled (as I have said) The
Devil's Own--are giving a dance in the fine newly-rebuilt hall of the
Inner Temple; which, by the way, stands on the very site where in past
days the Knights Templars used to laugh and quaff. It is a strictly
professional corps, this of the Inns of Court. Not only every officer,
but every man of the rank and file, is either actually a barrister, or
at any rate a student-member of one of the four old Inns, on his way, by
means of eating thirty-six dinners in term-time and passing an
examination, to achieve his "call" to the Bar. Still, overladen though
they be with briefs and business--as of course everybody knows all
London barristers are--the Devil's Own manage somehow to find time to
attain a passable proficiency in drill and rifle practice, and not a few
of them in waltzing too. So the corps determine to get up a d