I leave here to-morrow with a large, wet towel in my plug hat. Perhaps I should have said nothing on this dress reform question while my hat is fitting me so immediately. It is seldom that I step aside from the beaten path of rectitude, but last evening, on the way home, it seemed to me that I didn't do much else but step aside. At these parties no charge is made for punch. It is perfectly free. I asked a colored man who stood near the punch bowl, and who replenished it ever and anon, what the damage was, and he drew himself up to his full height. Possibly I did wrong, but I hate to be a burden on any one. It seemed odd to me to go to a first-class dance and find the supper and the band and the rum all paid for. It must cost a good deal of money to run this government. A GREAT BENEFACTOR |IT WAS not generally known at the time, but about a year ago a gentleman from Jays-burg, named Alanson G-. Meltz, opened a law office in Chicago, intending to give that city a style of clear-cut counseling, soliciting, conveyancing, prosecuting and defending, such as she had never witnessed before. He was young, but he was full of confidence, and as he pulled the nails out of the dry goods boxes, in which he had brought his revised statutes and replevin appliances, he felt ready and willing to furnish advice at living rates to all who would come and examine his stock. But time kept on in his remorseless flight, bringing in at the casement of Mr. Meltz the roar and hum of traffic, and the nut-brown flavor of the Chicago river, but that was all. He was there, ready and almost eager to advise one and all, but one and all, without exception, evaded him. No matter how gayly he lettered his window with the announcement that he would procure a divorce for any one without pain, married people continued to suffer on or go elsewhere. Even though he had put up a transparency: DIVORCES PREPARED WHILE YOU WAIT! No one called at his office, No. 61 Water street, to get one. Day after day innumerable people went by him in the mad rush and hurry of life, married but not mated, forgetting that Mr. Meltz could relieve them without publicity. Remorseless time had rolled on in this way for three months, now and then picking out a fragment of the cornice on the new court-house and braining a pedestrian with it, when one day Mr. Meltz was solicited by the proprietor of a new remedy for indigestion and brain-fever to try his medicine. He also told Mr. Meltz that in case of cure or beneficial effects he desired to use his endorsement, and as the remedy was new he proposed to issue an edition of 1,000,000 circulars containing the endorsement of prominent professional people of Chicago. Alanson G. Meltz bought a bottle and began using it. In three weeks the following endorsement entered over a million and a half families in the United States at the expense of the man who owned the remedy: Chicago, Dec. 13, 1883. Dr. J. Burdock Wells.--