A waltz is proposed, but that form of dancing is, says our author, "never established without a prolonged desire on the part of everybody to relinquish the honour of commencing it. At last the example is set by one daring pair, timidly followed by another couple, and then by another, who get out of step at the end of the first round, and after treading severely upon the advanced toes of the old lady in a very flowery cap and plum-coloured satin (one of our faded wallflowers), who is sitting out at the top of the room, and who from that instant deprecates waltzing as an amusement not at all consistent with her ideas of feminine decorum." [Illustration: "THE WALTZ."] The young lady in this drawing has much of Leech's charm; but I should scarcely have selected it were it not for the figure of the gentleman, which exactly resembles that of Leech himself as I first knew him. If conservatories, or even staircases, could speak, what flirtations they could chronicle, what love-tales they could tell! Mr. Smith says "you will have to confess your inability to imagine what on earth the gentleman with the long hair, who is carefully balancing himself on one leg against the flowerpot-stand, and the pretty girl with the bouquet, can find to talk about so long, so earnestly." I for one beg Mr. Albert Smith's pardon. I can easily imagine what they are talking about. [Illustration: "IN THE CONSERVATORY."] It would be a grave omission if "The Belle of the Evening" were left out of these extracts from the "Physiology of Evening Parties." Let me present her, then. Now listen to the flourish with which the author introduces her: "Room for beauty! The belle of the evening claims our next attention, the lovely dark-eyed girl so plainly yet so elegantly dressed, who wears her hair in simple bands over her fair forehead, unencumbered by flower or ornament of any kind, and moves in the light of her own beauty as the presiding goddess of the room, imparting fragrance to the enamoured air that plays around her!" [Illustration: "THE BELLE OF THE EVENING."] Rather tall talk, this, but excusable, perhaps, as applied to the lovely creature Leech has drawn for us. I feel I cannot close these extracts more appropriately than by allowing Mr. Ledbury to appear again at the moment of his departure from a scene in which he has so distinguished himself by his conversational, as well as by his terpsichorean, powers. He was destined to be guilty of one more folly--that of thinking he had but to ask for his hat to get it. [Illustration: "MR. LEDBURY'S HAT."] "He walks downstairs," says Mr. Smith, "under the insane expectation of finding his own hat, or madly deeming that the ticket pinned upon it corresponds with the one in his waistcoat pocket."