In this emergency the local committee on arrangements secured for the convention the use of the new Marshallville opera house, which was the pride of Marshallville--a compact but ornate structure having on its first floor no less than one hundred and fifty of those regular theatre chairs magnificently upholstered in hot red plush, and above, at the back, a balcony, and to crown all, two orthodox stage boxes of stucco, liberally embossed with gold paint, which clung, like gilded mud-daubers' nests, at either side of the proscenium arch, overhanging the stage below. In one of these boxes, as the delegates gathered that very warm August afternoon, a lady sat in solitary state. To the delegates were assigned the plush-enveloped grandeurs of the main floor. The spectators, including a large number of the male citizens of Marshallville with a sprinkling of their women-folk, packed the balcony to the stifling point, but this lady had a whole box to herself. She seemed fairly well pleased with herself as she sat there. Certainly she had no cause to complain of a lack of public interest in her and her costume. To begin with, there was a much beplumed hat, indubitably a thing of great cost and of augmented size, which effectively shaded and set off her plump face. No such hat had been seen in Marshallville before that day. The gown she wore was likewise of a fashion new to the dazzled gaze of her more plainly habited sisters in the balcony. I believe in the favoured land where they originated they call them princesse gowns. Be its name what it may, this garment ran in long, well-nigh un wrinkled lines from the throat of its wearer to her ankles. It was of some clinging white stuff, modelled seemingly with an intent to expose rather than to hide the curves of the rounded figure which it covered. It was close at the neck, snug at the bust, snugger still at the hips, and from there it flowed on tightly yet smoothly to where it ended, above a pair of high-heeled, big-buckled slippers of an amazing shininess. The uninitiated might well have marvelled how the lady ever got in her gown unless she had been melted and poured into it; but there was no mystery concerning the manner in which she had fastened it, once she was inside of it, for, when she turned away from the audience, a wondrously decorative finishing touch was to be seen: straight down the middle of her back coursed a close row of big, shiny black jet buttons, and when she shifted her shoulders these buttons undulated glisteningly along the line of her spinal column. The effect was snaky but striking.