The next great flutter in New York’s fashionable world was the announcement of a grand entertainment to be given, embracing all the features of a London ball, which, though a novelty here, had for years been done in London; that was to build an addition to one’s house, to be used but for one night, and to be made large enough to comfortably hold, with the house, one thousand or twelve hundred people. There was plenty of energy and talent to carry this out, and reproduce here what Londoners have always been so proud of--their ability to double the capacity of their city houses by utilizing their yards, covering them with a temporary structure, to be used as a supper or ball room. A young man of an old Long Island family had married a beautiful girl, a young woman such as Walter Scott would have taken to impersonate his character of Amy Robsart, who, besides this natural and _naïve_ style of beauty, possessed great administrative ability, and withal much taste, a great amount of energy, and a fortune large enough to carry through any enterprise she conceived. Both of them were devoted to society, and to each other. Passing their summers abroad, and seeing what vast conceptions society there undertook, and successfully carried out, they resolved to repeat here what they had seen on the other side of the water. In Marcotte they had a great ally, a man of wonderful taste and ability; planning out the work themselves, with his skillful hand to execute it, they certainly built up in a night, as it were, a superb banqueting hall, complete and elaborately finished as if a part of the house itself; a solid structure, with no appearance of its being temporary or run up for the occasion. Throwing two houses into one, and descending from them into this vast banqueting hall by a wide flight of stairs, you had, to all appearances, a grand palatial residence, whose rooms the largest crowd could roam through with freedom and perfect comfort. The houses themselves were so handsomely decorated in the period of Louis XIV., that it required cultivated taste to add floral decorations to such rooms; but it was done, and admirably done, and was a remarkable feature of this superb ball. Garlands of the delicate _La France_ roses were festooned on the walls, and over and around the doors and windows, producing a charming effect. There were two cotillions danced in separate rooms. The approach from the street to the houses was admirable; the pavement was inclosed the entire length of both, carpeted, and brilliantly lighted with innumerable jets of gas--a ball long to be remembered! What then was there left for one to do in the way of entertaining to give society anything new and novel? This duty was then imposed on me. These pages bear evidence that I am blessed with memory, but imagination was then what I required to conceive and carry out some new enterprise in the way of a subscription New Year’s ball, to surpass anything I had ever before given.