my situation, might be a little irritated, and
might astonish you by entering the house and
revealing themselves indignantly to the footman.
I am a philosopher; and I am grateful
to you, Mr. Policeman, for reminding me of my
own liberty.   Yes, official sir, I can move on;
it is my pride and pleasure to move on; it is
my great superiority over the unfortunate
persons shut up in that drawing-room, not one of
whom can move on, or has so much as a
prospect of moving on, for some time to come.
Wish you good evening, Mr. Policeman. In
the course of a long experience of Society, I
never enjoyed any party half as much as I have
enjoyed this; and I hardly know any favour
you could ask of me which I am so readily
disposed to grant as the favour of moving on.
Many, many thanks;  and pray remember me
kindly at Scotland-yard.

I leave the scene—or, rather, I am walked
off the scene—in the sweetest possible temper.
The carriages crash and bang past me by dozens;
the victims pour into the already over-crammed
house by twenties and thirties; Society's gowns
and Society's steam are thicker than ever on the
windows, as I see the last of them. Shocking!
shocking!  I am almost ashamed to feel so
strangely well, so unaccountably strong and
cool and blandly composed in mind and body.

On my airy way home (in excellent time) I
endeavour—being naturally a serious and
thoughtful man—to extract some useful result
for others out of my own novel experience of
Society. Animated by a loving and missionary
spirit, I resolve to enlighten my ignorant fellow-
creatures, my dark surrounding circle of social
heathen, by communicating to them my new
discovery of the best way of attending London
dinner-parties and soirées in the fervid heat of
July and August. In the course of the next
few days I carry out my humane intention by
relating the true narrative here set down to my
most valued and intimate friends. I point out
the immense sanitary advantages which are
likely to accrue from the general adoption of
such a sensible and original course of proceeding
as mine has been.  I show clearly that it
must, as a matter of necessity, be followed by a
wise change in the season of the year at which
parties are authorised to be given.  If we were
all to go and look in at the windows in our cool
morning costume, and then come away again,
the masters and mistresses of houses would have
no choice left but to adapt their hospitalities
sensibly to atmospheric circumstances; summer
would find us as summer ought to find us, in
the fields; and winter would turn our
collective animal heat to profitable and comfortable
results.

I put these plain points unmistakably; but
to my utter amazement nobody accepts my
suggestions. My friends, who all groan over giving
hot parties and going to hot parties, universally
resent my ingeniously unconventional plan for
making parties cool; and universally declare
that no man in his right senses could have acted
in such an outrageously uncustomary manner as
the manner in which I represent myself to have
acted on the memorable evening which these
pages record.  Apparently, the pleasure of
grumbling is intimately connected, in the
estimation of civilised humanity, with the pleasure
of going into Society? Or, in other words, ladies
and gentlemen particularly like their social
amusements, as long as they can say that they
don't like them. And these are the people who
indignantly tell me that I could hardly have
been in my right senses to have acted as I did on
the scorching July evening of my friend's
dinner. The rest who went into the house,
to half suffocate each other, at the very hottest
period of the year, are all sensible persons;
and I, who remained outside in the cool, and
looked at them comfortably, am fit for Bedlam?
Am I?

STORM EXPERIENCE.

IF there be any matter about which I am
enthusiastic it is Thunder and Lightning. I love
it. And yet, strange to say, up to the age of
thirteen years it inspired me with a painful terror.
Of this terror, which amounted to a disease, I
was cured in one night aboard a man-of-war,
a line-of-battle ship. We were in Bass's Straits,
where it lightens and thunders in real earnest.
It was twelve o'clock at night; the watch below
had been piped on deck, and before the relief
took place, the well-known voice of the first
lieutenant gave the mandate, "Reef the
topsails: mizen, fore, and main!"   Cool as the
freshening breeze was, I perspired from head to
foot, and I could distinctly hear the beating of
my young heart;  for I well knew that in less
than half a minute, as soon as the hands were all
aloft, the fiat would go forth, as it did in all
weathers and under any circumstances,
"Midshipmen into the tops to see the points tied!"
I had often been aloft before, but never in a
thunderstorm; and no craven culprit about to
suffer death on the scaffold ever experienced
pangs of fear superior to mine when I placed
my hands on the shrouds (the main shrouds),
and lightly touched with my feet the lower
rattlings.   There were no less than eighteen of us
appointed to this duty, six into each top.   The
boy who accompanied me (he is an admiral now,
and one of the most distinguished officers in the
royal navy) was, thank Heaven, as much
terrified as myself. I say "thank Heaven," for it
was the witnessing of his fear that inspired me
to take the courage which I knew he would
emulate.  "Come along!"  I said to him, "come
along!"  He responded, and we literally raced
for the lubber's hole, through which we crept,
and then stood in the top to survey the scene.
And such a scene!   There were no flashes of
lightning and no peals of thunder. There was one
continuous blaze of lurid glare, and there was
roar, and roar, and roar, without any intermission.
It was all lightning, lightning, lightning,
thunder, thunder, thunder, "nothing but thunder"
and lightning.   If every piece of ordnance
that man ever invented and brought into the