Went on to the auction table, where, after much competition with a ringleted miss (who was put there to make Peter Funk bids against probable purchasers), succeeded in bidding in a China vase, which I soon discovered had a hole in the bottom, and wouldn't hold water any more than it would bake pork. If I had bought it anywhere else should have thought I had been swindled, and have demanded my money back, but here I supposed it was an exemplification of some newly discovered principle of fair dealing with which I was not yet acquainted.
Was much amused with the way they disposed of the unsold goods--certain number of articles, (things left at the tables tended by the homely girls) and for each article twenty tickets were put into a hat, whence they were drawn out singly, and the last tickets drawn were to have the prizes--should have thought it was just the same as a lottery, if I had not been acquainted with the ladies, and known they wouldn't do anything so naughty.
Came to a place where an old lady, with steel spectacles, was cutting up a loaf of cake into particularly small pieces--asked what it meant--was told there was a gold ring somewhere in the cake, and they proposed to sell each piece for a quarter of a dollar, and give the ring to the lucky buyer--wondered if it wasn't another lottery on a small scale, but supposed it couldn't be--went to the supper-room.
It is a curious metropolitan fact, that at parties, balls, or wherever a refreshment-table is spread, every man seems to regard it as his duty to fill himself to the very lips with all the "delicacies of the season," and to accomplish it in the least time possible--as if he was a gun, and anxious to ascertain his calibre, and find out how quickly he could be loaded in case of necessity.
And the ladies are not far behind; this evening I learned how much a female _can_ eat in a charitable cause.
A pale-faced ball-room belle is a modern Sphinx--a gastronomic problem, whose solution will probably never be satisfactorily expounded.
Under the impression that she would not eat more than I had money to pay for, I invited a lady to take some refreshments, and I certainly think that, like the countryman, she imagined she was bound to eat all the bill-of-fare called for.
