To the reader, the author feels that he owes an apology for having in a light work, devoted chiefly to the worship of Momus, been led to say what he has said on legislative matters; the delict was not intentional, it arose naturally from the incident related, and from consideration of the dreadful evils of intemperance, and the defects of the statutes passed in reference to it. Yet, if from the melancholy details recorded with reference to gambling on the racecourse, and the miserable instances of drunkenness brought forward (which, be it remembered, are cases actually observed), one solitary individual be induced to reflect on the life-long misery which almost surely will result from pursuing either of these baneful paths, and he by this means is led to pause in his ruinous career, the effects of the fault may perhaps go far to obtain pardon for it. Nor can the author think that because his principal object is to amuse, he should altogether be debarred from sometimes assuming a graver tone. Examples of individual sorrows, failings or crimes, ought not to be altogether useless, seeing that they are pages of individual history, and all history we know teaches by example.
Having now offered his apology, and recorded his plea for a favourable judgment, his long digression draws to a close, and he returns to the fancy ball, the description of which was interrupted by feelings excited in consequence of the condition recorded of Captain S. Let us now forget the unhappy man, and mingle with the gay crowd.
It has been before observed that the 'Virgins of the Sun' attracted a good deal of rather quizzical notice on account of their leader, or high priestess, or whatever else she may have termed herself. Now it so happened that this lady unintentionally afforded new cause for the same sort of notice. She wore, as all the young ladies in her train did, a veil attached to her head-dress, from which it descended to her feet, falling in graceful folds about her person. As the room became warmer, in spite of the punkahs which were kept constantly going, for the dancers--among whom Mrs. W. (the _quasi_ virgin) had distinguished herself--the veil became unbearable. Mrs. W. rejoiced in rather a superfluity of flesh; she was a sanguine, full-blooded woman, with a large endowment of adipose tissue. We would on no account be so vulgar as to say that she was a fat woman; all that can be asserted, with due regard to the _bienséances_, is that she was decidedly, very decidedly, stout. The heat, the dancing, and the lady's full temperament, made the veil insufferable; it was accordingly laid aside, then at once were displayed charms that it is most difficult to do justice to. A dress laced in to the last point of endurance, and at the back so liberally cut down that the view afforded was unusually extensive, may give some notion of the length and breadth of the prospect. The heat, the exercise, and the constitution of the lady may, to those who have carefully studied such natural phenomena, suggest that a lovely roseate hue, a truly infantine tint, overpowered the native alabaster of the skin. The effect of the painfully heroic efforts to obtain a waist had produced a strong line down the spine, and had, moreover, accumulated masses of roseate adipose tissue on either side of that line. The _tout ensemble_ presented such a comical resemblance to something that may be imagined though it may not be uttered, that the whole room was in a titter.