s in my official capacity.

It was all Alicia with me, whatever they did. I read the Minutes through
a soft medium of maize-colored skirts. Notes of melodious laughter
bubbled, in my mind's ear, through all the drawling and stammering of
our speech-making members. When our dignified President thought he had
caught my eye, and made oratorical overtures to me from the top of the
table, I was lost in the contemplation of silk purses and white fingers
weaving them. I meant "Alicia" when I said "hear, hear"--and when I
officially produced my subscription list, it was all aglow with the
roseate hues of the marriage-license. If any unsympathetic male readers
should think this statement exaggerated, I appeal to the ladies--_they_
will appreciate the rigid, yet tender, truth of it.

The night of the ball came. I have nothing but the vaguest recollection
of it.

I remember that the more the perverse lecture theater was warmed the
more persistently it smelled of damp plaster; and that the more brightly
it was lighted, the more overgrown and lonesome it looked. I can recall
to mind that the company assembled numbered about fifty, the room being
big enough to hold three hundred. I have a vision still before me,
of twenty out of these fifty guests, solemnly executing intricate
figure-dances, under the superintendence of an infirm local
dancing-master--a mere speck of fidgety human wretchedness twisting
about in the middle of an empty floor. I see, faintly, down the dim
vista of the Past, an agreeable figure, like myself, with a cocked hat
under its arm, black tights on its lightly tripping legs, a rosette in
its buttonhole, and an engaging smile on its face, walking from end to
end of the room, in the character of Master of the Ceremonies. These
visions and events I can recall vaguely; and with them my remembrances
of the ball come to a close. It was a complete failure, and that would,
of itself, have been enough to sicken me of remaining at the Duskydale
Institution, even if I had not had any reasons of the tender sort for
wishing to extend my travels in rural England to the neighborhood of
Barkingham.

The difficulty was how to find a decent pretext for getting away.
Fortunately, the Managing Committee relieved me of any perplexity on
this head, by passing a resolution, one day, which called upon the
President to remonstrate with me on my want of proper interest in the
affairs of the Institution. I replied to the remonstrance t