Having passed the bazaar, we turned sharply from the main road, into a pretty extensive compound or domain, and soon found ourselves before the portico of the school, amongst buggies, palankeens, and other conveyances appertaining to visitors who had preceded us. Leaving our palankeens, we entered the house, passed through several rooms, one of them devoted to refreshments, and partly filled with gay Lotharios, some few military, the rest belonging to the orders “shippy” and “cranny,”[5] and finally entered the ball-room. This we found thronged with dancers, in a blaze of light, and resounding to the merry notes of a band, which, though not exactly equal to Weippert’s, seemed, nevertheless, as a locomotive stimulus, to be quite as effective. The country-dance then flourished in its green old age, and the couples at the Kidderpore hop were flying about in great style—poussette, hands across, down the middle, and back again—evincing, in spite of the temperature, all that laudable perseverance so essential to the accomplishment of such laborious undertakings. Marpeet, at my particular request, and to keep us in countenance, wore his uniform, though he had previously declared (considering the season) that it was a most griffinish proceeding to sport broadcloth, and decidedly against his conscience. “You griffs, however,” said he “will have your way, and we must humour you sometimes.” As for myself, in my scarlet raggie, brimstone facings, black waist-belt, and regulation sword, in my own opinion I looked quite the god of war, and was fully armed for execution. What an era in the life of a soldier is his first appearance in regimentals, “his blushing honours thick about him!” how he then pants for love and glory; the tented field and the clash of arms! At forty or fifty, possibly, if of a thoughtful vein, his sword converted to a hoe or pen, a mighty change comes o’er him, and he thinks, perhaps, that he might have done better had he stuck to a black or a blue one. Sometimes, it is true, when warmed with a flicker of his youthful fire, like Job’s war-horse, he loves to “snuff the battle from afar,” and “saith to the trumpets, ‘ha! ha!’” But, mainly, war delights him no more, for he sees the wide-spread evils which lurk under its exciting pomp and meretricious glitter, and his heart and mind yearn towards those more ennobling pursuits and occupations, which tend to elevate his species, to give to the intellectual and moral their due ascendency, and which speak of “peace and good-will to man.” The dancers being in motion, we did not advance, but contented ourselves with occupying a position by the door, and leisurely surveying the scene. At one end of the apartment, on chairs and benches, sat certain elderly matrons, amongst whom were the superiors of the establishment, looking complacently at the young folks, and calculating in all probability the amount of execution likely to result from the evening’s amusements.