mirth and enjoyment
of Life; and I came to yet another establishment, where the landlady
lacked the half of her left lung, as a cough betrayed, but was none the
less amusing in a dreary way, until she also dropped the mask and the
playful jesting began. All the jokes I had heard before at the other
place. It is a poor sort of Life that cannot spring one new jest a day.
More than ever did the youth cock his hat and explain that he was a real
"chippy," and that there were no flies on him. Any one without a
cast-iron head would be "real chippy" next morning after one glass of
that sirupy champagne. I understand now why men feel insulted when sweet
fizz is offered to them. The second interview closed as the landlady
gracefully coughed us into the passage, and so into the healthy, silent
streets. She was very ill indeed, and announced that she had but four
months more to live.

"Are we going to hold these dismal levees all through the night?" I
demanded at the fourth house, where I dreaded the repetition of the
thrice-told tales.

"It's better in 'Frisco. Must amuse the girls a little bit, y'know. Walk
round and wake 'em up. That's Life. You never saw it in India?" was the
reply.

"No, thank God, I didn't. A week of this would make me hang myself," I
returned, leaning wearily against a door-post. There were very loud
sounds of revelry by night here, and the inmates needed no waking up.
One of them was recovering from a debauch of three days, and the other
was just entering upon the same course. Providence protected me all
through. A certain austere beauty of countenance had made every one take
me for a doctor or a parson--a qualified parson, I think; and so I was
spared many of the more pronounced jokes, and could sit and contemplate
the Life that was so sweet. I thought of the Oxonian in _Tom and Jerry_
playing jigs at the spinet,--you seen the old-fashioned plate,--while
Corinthian Tom and Corinthian Kate danced a stately saraband in a little
carpeted room. The worst of it was, the women were real women and
pretty, and like some people I knew, and when they stopped the insensate
racket for a while they were well behaved.

"Pass for real ladies anywhere," said my friend. "Aren't these things
well managed?"

Then Corinthian Kate began to bellow for more drinks,--it was three in
the morning,--and the current of hideous talk recommenced.

They spoke about themselves as "gay." This does not look much on paper.
To appre