cess of his acquaintance, and Dropper, as in duty bound, asked
her to waltz, and actually proceeded to carry out his intention.

[Illustration]

As some sixty other couples attempted the same feat at the same time,
and as there wasn't room for any one man to dance without stepping on
the heels of his neighbor, the scene instantly assumed a peculiar
appearance. Dropper first whisked his partner against a flower girl and
upset her basket, then against a Paul Pry, and demolished his horn
spectacles, then he tumbled her into the stomach of a Falstaff and
rolled him into the window curtains, then he himself stepped on the
favorite corn of a tall Hamlet, and pushed his elbows into a Shylock and
broke his false hooked nose, and they both concluded their gyrations by
upsetting a couple of brigands, and marching deliberately over the
prostrate bodies of Helen McGregor and a matchboy in their progress to a
sofa, which they finally reached in an exhausted condition; the lady
wanted some water, which Remington started to get but didn't come back,
inasmuch as he hurt his shins by tumbling over a chair and fell to the
floor, carrying with him in his descent a fairy in one hand and a Fitz
James in the other. The crowd immediately closed around him, so that he
could not rise, and, as he was involuntarily reposing directly upon the
hot air register, he was more than half cooked before he got rescued
out.

The attempt to dance created also no small amount of confusion among the
others, about twenty-five of whom were precipitated into the
conservatory and dispersed through the orchestra. King Lear landed with
his head in a French horn, and Byron's Corsair was seen to demolish two
violins with his hands at precisely the same time he kicked both feet
through the bass drum.

Supper came at last, and the guests were fed in installments, as many
getting near the tables as could crowd into the rooms. Jellies, creams,
fruits, and the more substantial articles of the repast, were devoured,
and scattered over the carpets, and over the dresses of the assembled
multitude, in about equal quantities. Champagne corks flew, and all the
men of whatever nation, trade, or occupation represented in that
incongruous assemblage, seemed to understand perfectly well what
champagne was. Kings drank with peasants, brigands touched glasses with
monks, and Shylock the Jew took a friendly drink with her majesty the
Queen of Sheba.

After supper the smash recom