The fat Alderman cried out about the ruin of commerce, and Mr. Vamp was very hot on the subject of the revenue. The question was warmly canvassed, and many of the party who had not been quite persuaded by what Mr. Forester had said in behalf of the anti-saccharine system, were perfectly convinced in its favour when they had heard what Mr. Vamp and the fat Alderman had to say against it; and the consequence was, that, in spite of Mr. Sarcastic’s opinion of the general selfishness of mankind, the numbers of the Anti-saccharine Society were very considerably augmented. ‘You see,’ said Mr. Fax to Mr. Sarcastic, ‘the efficacy of associated sympathies. It is but to give an impulse of cooperation to any good and generous feeling, and its progressive accumulation, like that of an Alpine avalanche, though but a snowball at the summit, becomes a mountain in the valley.’ CHAPTER XXVIII THE CHESS DANCE The dinner was followed by a ball, for the opening of which Sir Telegraph Paxarett, who officiated as master of the ceremonies, had devised a fanciful scheme, and had procured for the purpose a number of appropriate masquerade dresses. An extensive area in the middle of the ballroom was chalked out into sixty-four squares of alternate white and red, in lines of eight squares each. Sir Telegraph, while the rest of the company was sipping, not without many wry faces, their anti-saccharine tea, called out into another apartment the gentlemen whom he had fixed on to perform in his little ballet; and Miss Evergreen at the same time withdrew with the intended female performers. Sir Telegraph now invested Mr. Hippy with the dignity of White King, Major O’Dogskin with that of Black King, and the Reverend Mr. Portpipe with that of White Bishop, which the latter hailed as a favourable omen, not precisely comprehending what was going forward. As the reverend gentleman was the only one of his cloth in the company, Sir Telegraph was under the necessity of appointing three lay Bishops, whom he fixed on in the persons of two country squires, Mr. Hermitage and Mr. Heeltap, and of the fat Alderman already mentioned, Sir Gregory Greenmould. Sir Telegraph himself, Mr. O’Scarum, Mr. Derrydown, and Mr. Sarcastic, were the Knights: and the Rooks were Mr. Feathernest the poet; Mr. Paperstamp, another variety of the same genus, chiefly remarkable for an affected infantine lisp in his speech, and for always wearing waistcoats of a duffel gray; Mr. Vamp the reviewer; and Mr. Killthedead, from Frogmarsh Hall, a great compounder of narcotics, under the denomination of BATTLES, for he never heard of a deadly field, especially if dotage and superstition, to which he was very partial, gained the advantage over generosity and talent, both of which he abhorred, but immediately seizing his goosequill and foolscap, He fought the BATTLE o’er again, And twice he slew the slain.