There may be natures to whom, according to Sir Cornewall Lewis's dictum, life would be tolerable but for its enjoyments; but the Elysians assuredly are not of the number. They go about pleasure-hunting with a vehemence the stronger and keener for the long period of partial or total abstinence from amusement which most of them have undergone. The soldier who has been for months marching up and down a desert frontier, with no attainable form of excitement but the agreeable possibility of having one's throat cut in the night or a bullet cleverly lodged in one from behind a rock overhead--the engineer who has been for months out in camp with little companionship but that of theodolites and maps--the forest superintendent who has spent a twelvemonth among the deodars in some nameless Himalayan gorge--the civilian who has carried off his bride to a solitary existence in some far-off Mofussil station, where the only European is perhaps an excise officer or policeman--people like these acquire a keen relish for any change of scene and rush into a holiday with the enthusiasm of long-imprisoned schoolboys. Nothing damps their ardour--not even Himalayan rain, which effectually damps everything else. There is a ball, for instance, at the Club House; it is raining cataracts and has been doing so for twenty hours. The mountain paths are knee-deep in mud, and swept by many a turgid torrent rattling from above. Great masses of thunder-cloud come looming up, rumbling, crashing and blazing upon a sodden, reeking world. The night is black as Tartarus, save when the frequent flashes light it up with a momentary glare. The road is steep, rough and not too safe. Carriages, of course, there are none. A false step might send you several thousand feet down the precipice into the valley below. Will all this prevent Jones the Collector and Brown the Policeman and Smith of the Irregular Cavalry putting their respective ladies into palanquins, mounting their ponies like men and finding their way, through field and flood, to the scene of dissipation? Each will ensconce himself in a panoply of indiarubber and require a great deal of peeling before becoming presentable in a ballroom; but each will get himself peeled, and dance till four o'clock. The ladies will emerge from their palanquins as fresh and bright and ambrosial as lace and tarlatan can make them. Mrs. Jones, if she would only tell the truth, has already more than half-filled up her card with engagements. Smith and his wife have never been at a dance since the night he proposed to her at the Woolwich ball, and feel quite romantic at the prospect of a valse together. Mrs. Brown will meet half-a-dozen particular friends who are dying to see her, and whom she is not averse to see. The night outside is Tartarean, certainly, but within there is nothing but light, music and mirth. The band crashes out and drowns the patter of the rain above. The Viceroy, towering like a