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 later it is no matter, for the rooms will be darkened and we can dance until nine o'clock, if we choose."

I wuz speechless with my emotions; I couldn't quell 'em and didn't want to, but Miss Greene Smythe didn't notice 'em, for she seemed all took up tellin' her maid where to put the gorgeousest of the gems she wuz sewin' onto the satin, and then she sez sunthin' about seein' Medora a minute and handed me a hull lapfull of books and magazines, and sayin' sunthin' to the girl about refreshments, she left the room. I wuz settin' tryin' to read them magazines she had piled in my lap, but I didn't git much interested in 'em, for they wuz all about fashions and boleros, which I had always thought wuz some kind of a Mexican steer, but found out it wuz sunthin' to wear, and reveres, which sounded well, but meant fashionable clothing, and so on lots of other strange names and descriptions, but I didn't care much for 'em.

Well, I had turned 'em over and had jest lit on sunthin' so important that they put it even into a fashionable magazine, a long description of a football race and a college athletic contest in which two young men had got maimed for life and one killed outright, and more'n two hundred drunk as fools, and I wuz readin' it with horrow when my companion come up crazy with a new idee, he had heard there wuz goin' to be a fancy ball, and he wanted to join it in costoom and attend the ball.

Sez I, "Josiah Allen, I shall not stay here till twelve P. M., but, if I wuz goin', I should go as myself, and not as anybody else."

"Why," sez he, "the fancy dress is goin' to be first. We can jine in that and then go home, for I don't want to dance," sez he.