w to be amused entirely
on my own shoulders, and left the easy and customary business of making
them miserable to others.

My unhappy countrymen! (and thrice unhappy they of the poorer sort)--any
man can preach to them, lecture to them, and form them into classes--but
where is the man who can get them to amuse themselves? Anybody may cram
their poor heads; but who will brighten their grave faces? Don't read
story-books, don't go to plays, don't dance! Finish your long day's
work and then intoxicate your minds with solid history, revel in
the too-attractive luxury of the lecture-room, sink under the soft
temptation of classes for mutual instruction! How many potent, grave and
reverent tongues discourse to the popular ear in these siren strains,
and how obediently and resignedly this same weary popular ear listens!
What if a bold man spring up one day, crying aloud in our social
wilderness, "Play, for Heaven's sake, or you will work yourselves into
a nation of automatons! Shake a loose leg to a lively fiddle! Women
of England! drag the lecturer off the rostrum, and the male mutual
instructor out of the class, and ease their poor addled heads of
evenings by making them dance and sing with you. Accept no offer from
any man who cannot be proved, for a year past, to have systematically
lost his dignity at least three times a week, after office hours. You,
daughters of Eve, who have that wholesome love of pleasure which is one
of the greatest adornments of the female character, set up a society for
the promotion of universal amusement, and save the British nation from
the lamentable social consequences of its own gravity!" Imagine a
voice crying lustily after this fashion--what sort of echoes would it
find?--Groans?

I know what sort of echoes my voice found. They were so discouraging
to me, and to the frivolous minority of pleasure-seekers, that I
recommended lowering the price of admission so as to suit the means of
any decent people who were willing to leave off money-grubbing and tear
themselves from the charms of mutual instruction for one evening at
least. The proposition was indignantly negatived by the managers of the
Institution. I am so singularly obstinate a man that I was not to be
depressed even by this.

My next efforts to fill the ballroom could not be blamed. I procured
a local directory, put fifty tickets in my pocket, dressed myself in
nankeen pantaloons and a sky-blue coat (then the height of fashion),
a