that you
have, at all events, a something of local topics in common, having
picked up a little knowledge of places and people during your stay, or
if you are quite a new-comer, you can easily set your neighbor a-going
by questions about surroundings. Generally there is some acquaintance
between most of the people staying in a house, as hosts make up their
parties with the view of accommodating persons wishing to meet others
whom they like. Young men will thus frequently get a good-natured
hostess to ask some young lady whose society they especially affect,
and thus country-houses become proverbially adapted for match-making.

There are few houses now-a-days in which the gentlemen linger in
the dining-room long after the ladies have left it. Habits of hard
drinking are now almost entirely confined to young men in the army
and the lower classes. The evenings are spent chiefly in conversation:
sometimes a rubber of whist is made up, or, if there are a number of
young people, there is dancing.

A rather surprising step which occasioned something of a scandalous
sensation in the social world was resorted to some years ago at a
country-house in Devonshire. Two or three fast young ladies, finding
the evening somewhat heavy, and lamenting a dearth of dancing men,
rang the bell, and in five minutes the lady of the house, who was
in another room, was aghast at seeing them whirling round in
their Jeames's arms. It was understood that the ringleader in this
enterprise, the daughter of an Irish earl, was not likely to be asked
to repeat her visit.

About eleven wine and water and biscuits are brought into the
drawing-room, and a few minutes later the ladies retire. The wine and
water, with the addition of other stimulants, are then transferred
to the billiard- and smoking-rooms, to which the gentlemen adjourn
so soon as they have changed their black coats for dressing-gowns or
lounging suits, in which great latitude is given to the caprice of
individual fancy.

The sittings in these apartments are protracted until any hour, as the
servants usually go to bed when they have provided every one with
his flat candle-stick--that emblem of gentility which always so
prominently recurred to the mind of Mrs. Micawber when recalling the
happy days when she "lived at home with papa and mamma." In some fast
houses pretty high play takes place at such times.

It not unfrequently happens that the master of the house takes but
a very limited