or lurking proctors, and then brushing the nap of
his cocked hat and humming his favorite Latin song, stepped daintily
into the street and bent his way toward the Raleigh.

Sir Asinus thought he had never seen a finer ball; for, to say nothing
of the chariots and coachmen and pawing horses and liveries at the
door--of the splendid gentlemen dismounting from their cobs and
entering gay and free the spacious ball-room--there was the great and
overwhelming array of fatal beauty raining splendor on the noisy air,
and turning every thing into delight.

The great room--the _Apollo_ famed in history for ever--blazed from
end to end with lights; the noble minstrels of the festival sat high
above and stunned the ears with fiddles, hautboys, flutes and fifes
and bugles; the crowd swayed back and forth, and buzzed and hummed and
rustled with a well-bred laughter;--and from all this fairy spectacle
of brilliant lights and fair and graceful forms arose a perfume which
made the ascetic Sir Asinus once more happy, causing his lips to
smile, his eyes to dance, his very pointed nose to grow more sharp as
it inhaled the fragrance showering down in shivering clouds.

Make way for his Excellency!--here he comes, the gallant gay Fauquier,
with a polite word for every lady, and a smile for the old planters
who have won and lost with him their thousands of pounds. And the
smiling Excellency has a word for the students too, and among the rest
for Sir Asinus, his prime favorite.

"Ah, Tom!" he says, "give you good evening."

"Good evening, your Excellency," said Sir Asinus, bowing.

"From your exile?"

"Yes, sir."

"Ah, well, _carpe diem_! be happy while you may--that has been my
principle in life. A fine assembly; and if I am not mistaken, I hear
the shuffle of cards yonder in the side room."

"Yes, sir."

"Ah, you Virginians! I find your thirst for play even greater than my
own."

"I think your Excellency introduced the said thirst."

"What! introduced it? I? Not at all. You Virginians are true
descendants of the cavaliers--those long-haired gentlemen who drank,
and diced, and swore, and got into the saddle, and fought without
knowing very accurately what they were fighting about. See, I have
drawn you to the life!"

Sir Asinus smiled.

"We shall some day have to fight, sir," he said, "and we shall then
falsify our ancestral character."

"How?"

"We shall know what we fight about!"

"Bah! my dear Tom! there you are beg