"A charming party!" cried my daughters in melodious chorus, as I surveyed this scene of ruin. Charming, indeed! If I had dressed up my four girls, and sent them to Greenwich Fair, with strict orders to get drunk and assault the police, and if they had carefully followed my directions, could they have come home to me in a much worse condition than the condition in which I see them now? Could any man, not acquainted with the present monstrous system of party-giving, look at my four young women, and believe that they had been spending the evening under the eyes of their parents, at a respectable house? If the party had been at a linendraper's, I could understand the object of this wanton destruction of property. But Doctor Crump is not interested in making me buy new gowns. What have I done to him that he should ask me and my family to his house, and all but tear my children's gowns off their backs, in return for our friendly readiness to accept his invitation? But my daughters danced all the evening, and these little accidents will happen in private ballrooms. Indeed? I did not dance, my wife did not dance, my son-in-law did not dance. Have we escaped injury on that account? Decidedly not. Velvet is not an easy thing to tear, so I have no rents to deplore in my wife's dress. But I apprehend that a spoonful of trifle does not reach its destination properly, when it is deposited in a lady's lap; and I altogether deny that there is any necessary connection between the charms of society, and the wearing of crushed macaroons, adhesively dotted over the back part of a respectable matron's dress. I picked three off my wife's gown, as she swam out of the dining-room, on her way up-stairs; and I am informed that two new breadths will be wanted in front, in consequence of her lap having been turned into a plate for trifle. As for my son-in-law, his trousers are saturated with spilt champagne; and he took, in my presence, nearly a handful of flabby lobster salad out of the cavity between his shirt-front and his waistcoat. For myself, I have had my elbow in a game-pie, and I see with disgust a slimy path of extinct custard, meandering down the left-hand lappel of my coat. Altogether, this party, on the lowest calculation, casts me in damages to the tune of ten pounds, eighteen shillings, and sixpence.[4]