DEAR AUNTY,--There has been a regular deluge of balls in Paris this winter. The Minister of Marine gave a gorgeous one, the _clou_ of which was the entrance at midnight precisely of _Les Quatres Continents_, being four long _cortèges_ representing Europe, America, Africa, and Asia. I was quite provoked that they did not ask me to be in the American _cortège_. I should have loved to have been an Indian squaw, except that a blanket is a rather warm _toilette de bal_. They wanted me to take a costume of a Spanish lady in the _cortège_ of Europe, but I refused; if I could not be in the American I did not want to be in any of the others. Taking part in the _cortège_ meant waiting till midnight before appearing, and then, being in it, you did not see it. I had a banal and not a correct costume of an Amazone Louis XIII., and stayed in the ballroom all the evening, and saw the procession when it came in. It was very interesting and really beautifully arranged. Africa (Mademoiselle de Sèvres) was brought in on a camel fresh from the jungle of the Jardin des Plantes, and followed by quantities of natives of every variety of shade, from sepia to chocolate, as near to nature as they dared go without spoiling their beauty. Some of the costumes were very fantastic. Ladies dressed in skirts made of feathers, and beads hanging everywhere, copied after well-known pictures, and especially after the costumes of "l'Africaine," of the Opera. The men wore enormous wigs made of black wool, and black _tricots_, blacker than the most African of negroes. Asia (Baronne Erlanger) was standing on a platform carried by menials hidden from view and smothered under tiger and other skins. She was poised with one foot on the head of a tiger, one hand was clutching a date-tree, and the other hand clinging to the back of a stuffed leopard, it must have been difficult for her to keep her balance; her platform seemed very shaky, and the date-tree waved as if it had been in a tornado. The natives who followed her were more beaded and feathery and multicolored than the Africans, otherwise they looked much alike. America was represented by a pretty girl (a Miss Carter, of Boston). She was brought in reclining in a hammock of gay colors. The American natives were not of the kind one meets in New York and Boston; they were mostly the type taken from the most popular books. There was the sedate Puritan from Longfellow's "Evangeline"; the red Indians from Cooper's books; Hiawatha and Pocahontas, of course; and the type most beloved in the European market, that of the plantation tyrant who drags his victim to the whipping-post with pointed stakes and cudgels, _à la Oncle Tom_, and lastly the Mexican types with slouched hats and picturesque shirts and leather leggings, pistols bulging from their belts.