Society expects every guest after a dance to go through the form of paying a call upon the giver. If you are an old friend of the house, or for any reason want to go in, it will be wise to defer your visit for two or three days, until the interior of the house has recovered its normal condition; for of course on the very day that follows a dance the rooms are in such a universal state of up-side-downness (if the word may be coined) that callers can't expect to be admitted. For which reason, if you don't want to go in, you can't do better than select this very day for leaving a card at the door; which last ceremony duly concluded, all possible respect and duty may be taken to have been shown and done to the private ball: at all events, the present writer--rejoice, long-suffering reader, if you still exist--has no further word or suggestion to offer, on this occasion, on the subject. W. D. R. THE LIVELIES. IN TWO PARTS.--I. "What under the canopy is all that hammering at the door?" said Mrs. Lively, glancing up from her crocheting. Master Napoleon Lively, the person appealed to, was sucking a lemon through a stick of candy. He took this from his mouth, said, "Dunno," and then returned it to the anxious aperture. "And don't care," said Mrs. Lively with spirit. "Any other child in the city would go to the door and find out what it means; but you! much you care to save your mother's feet!" Gathering her ball of worsted with the crocheting in her left hand, she swept out of the room and through the hall to the front door. She pulled this open. There stood a man with hammer in hand. "No harm to ye's, marm," he said. "I's jist afther puttin' a bill on ye's door; for shure it's to be sowld, that the house is." "Sold!" cried Mrs. Lively. "When?" "Faith! whiniver it may please a body to buy it," was the definite reply. Mrs. Lively read the bill: "'Six thousand dollars!' Why the whole property isn't worth six thousand, much less the lease for twelve years. Won't the owner take less?" "It's more than likely he would, 'specially from the likes of ye's. Shure! folks most ginerly wants all they kin git, and ef they can't git it they'll be afther takin' less. The gintleman says as it must be sold immadiate, for the owner is bruck to smitherations." Here was prospective trouble. Mrs. Lively went down the doorsteps and along the paved walk to her husband's office, in the front basement. The doctor laid down his pen, expecting a patient, but, seeing that it was only his wife, resumed it.