so wounded her feelings, when you betrayed her to
the St. Cecilia, that she has sworn to have revenge on you. George
Mullholland, too, has sworn to have your life.

"I tell you what it is, Judge, (the accommodation man assumes the air of
a bank director,) I have just conceived--you will admit I have an
inventive mind!--a plot that will carry you clean through the whole
affair. Your ambition is divided between a passion for this charming
creature and the good opinion of better society. The resolution to
retain the good opinion of society is doing noble battle in your heart;
but it is the weaker vessel, and it always will be so with a man of your
mould, inasmuch as such resolutions are backed up by the less fierce
elements of our nature. Put this down as an established principle. Well,
then, I will take upon myself the betrayal. I will plead you ignorant of
the charge, procure her forgiveness, and reconcile the matter with this
Mullholland. It's worth an hundred or more, eh?"

The venerable man smiles, shakes his head as if heedless of the
admonition, and again covers his face with his domino.

The accommodation man, calling him by his judicial title, says he will
yet repent the refusal!

It is ten o'clock. The gentleman slightly colored, who represents a
fussy beadle, makes a flourish with his great staff. The doors of the
dancing hall are thrown open. Like the rushing of the gulf stream there
floods in a motley procession of painted females and masked men--the
former in dresses as varied in hue as the fires of remorse burning out
their unuttered thoughts. Two and two they jeer and crowd their way
along into the spacious hall, the walls of which are frescoed in
extravagant mythological designs, the roof painted in fret work, and the
cornices interspersed with seraphs in stucco and gilt. The lights of two
massive chandeliers throw a bewitching refulgence over a scene at once
picturesque and mysterious; and from four tall mirrors secured between
the windows, is reflected the forms and movements of the masquers.

Reader! you have nothing in this democratic country with which to
successfully compare it. And to seek a comparison in the old world,
where vice, as in this city of chivalry, hath a license, serves not our
office.

Madame Flamingo, flanked right and left by twelve colored gentlemen,
who, their collars decorated with white and pink rosettes, officiate as
masters of ceremony, and form a crescent in front of the