performances in your country and seen illustrations of them in your papers, where the young ladies on the stage were scarcely more clad than we are, and yet the performances were said to be attended by the highest and noblest of the land, both ladies and gentlemen."
I confess this was a home-thrust I found some difficulty in parrying, but I tried to get out of it by saying that people expected to see on the stage the very opposite to what would be approved of in private life.
This explanation did not satisfy my fair questioner, nor was I altogether satisfied with it myself. She perceived my embarrassment, and, with fine feminine tact, immediately changed the subject of conversation.
"What I think I would like best in your terrestrial life, would be to go up in a balloon. When sailing about in the air, ascending or descending at pleasure, one would feel oneself emancipated for the time from those everlasting laws of gravitation which keep you plodding about on the dirty earth. In a balloon, you must experience some of our sensations in the clear water that buoys us up."
I explained that the temperature fell rapidly as we mounted, so we had to encumber ourselves with a still greater load of garments than we required down on earth.
She shrugged her white shoulders at this; and made a pretty mouth indicative of dislike.
"After all, then," she said, "there is nothing like the water for comfort and pleasure."
One evening, when she was my partner at a gyrating assembly, in the pause between two dances, she said:—
