little enamelled
studs, with sleeve-buttons to match. Altogether he was a wonderful lion,
considering his size. Even Benson had not the courage to stop and
introduce his friend until he passed the great dancer more than once, in
silent admiration, and with a respectful bow.

And as they passed he detailed to Ashburner, with his usual biographical
accuracy, the history of Tom Edwards, which he had begun in the
stage-coach. Tom had been left in his infancy with a fortune and without
a father, to be brought up by relatives who had an unlucky preference of
Parisian to American life. Under their auspices and those of other
Mentors, whom he found in that gay capital, his progress was so rapid,
that at a very early age he was known as the banker of two or three
distinguished _lorettes_, and the pet pupil of the renowned Cellarius.
Indeed, he had lived so much in the society of that gentleman and his
dancing girls, that he took the latter for his standard of female
society, and had a tendency to behave to all womankind as he behaved to
them. To married ladies he talked slightly refined _double-entendre_: to
young ladies he found it safest to say very little, his business and
pleasure being to dance with them; if they did not dance, he gave them
up for uncivilized beings, and troubled himself no further about them.
Of old people of either sex he took no further notice than to order them
out of the way when they impeded the polkers, or dance bodily over them
when they disobeyed. Still it must be said, in justice to him, that
dancing was not his sole and all-absorbing pursuit. Having an active
turn of mind and body, he found leisure for many other profitable
amusements. He was fond of that noble animal, the horse, gambled
habitually, ate and drank luxuriously,--in short, burned his candle at a
good many ends: but the dance was, though not his sole, certainly his
favorite passion; and he was never supremely happy but when he had all
the chairs in the house arranged in a circle, and all the boys and women
of "our set" going around them in the German cotillon, from noon to
midnight at a (so-called) _matinee_, or from midnight to daybreak at a
ball.

"And now," said Benson, "I think my cousin Gerard must be up by this
time; he and Edwards are generally the last to come down to breakfast.
Perhaps we shall find him at the ten-pin alley; I see the ladies are
moving that way."

To the ten-pin alley they went. Down stairs, men were play