We certainly do not approve of Mr. Charles Dickens’s dictum that champagne’s proper place is not at the dinner-table, but solely at a ball. “A cavalier,” he said, “may appropriately offer at propitious intervals a glass now and then to his danceress. There it takes its fitting rank and position amongst feathers, gauzes, lace, embroidery, ribbons, white satin, shoes, and eau-de-Cologne, for champagne is simply one of the elegant extras of life.” This is all very well, still the advantageous effect of sparkling wine at an ordinary British dinner-party, composed as it frequently is of people pitchforked together in accordance with the exigencies of the hostess’s visiting-list, cannot be gainsayed. After the preliminary glowering at each other, _more Britannico_, in the drawing-room, everybody regards it as a relief to be summoned to the repast, which, however, commences as chillily as the soup and as stolidly as the salmon. The soul of the hostess is heavy with the anxiety of prospective dishes, the brow of the host is clouded with the reflection that our rulers are bent upon dragging us into war. Placed between a young lady just out and a dowager of grimly Gorgonesque aspect, you hesitate how to open a conversation. Your first attempts, like those of the Russian batteries on the Danube, are singularly ineffectual, only eliciting a dropping fire of monosyllables. You envy the placidly languid young gentleman opposite, limp as his fast-fading camellia, and seated next to Belle Breloques, who is certain, in racing parlance, to make the running for him. But even that damsel seems preoccupied with her fan, and, despite her _aplomb_, hesitates to break the icy silence. The two City friends of the host are lost in mute speculation as to the future price of indigo or Ionian Bank shares, while their wives seem to be mentally summarising the exact cost of each other’s toilettes. Their daughters, or somebody else’s daughters, are desperately jerking out monosyllabic responses to feeble remarks concerning the weather, lawn tennis, operatic _débutantes_, the gravel in the Row, the ill-health of the Princess, and kindred topics from a couple of F.O. men. Little Snapshot, the wit, on the other side of the Gorgon, has tried to lead up to a story, but has found himself, as it were, frozen in the bud. When lo! the butler softly sibillates in your ear the magic word “champagne,” and as it flows, creaming and frothing, into your glass, a change comes over the spirit of your vision.