My invitation to the ball read as follows: _THE GENERAL COMMITTEE OF ARRANGEMENTS_ _Invite Mr. Ward McAllister to a Ball to be given by the Citizens of New York to the_ PRINCE OF WALES, _At the Academy of Music, on Friday Evening, the twelfth of October, 1860, at nine o’clock_. PETER COOPER, _Chairman_. _M. B. Field_, _Secretary_. The ball was to be opened by a _Quadrille d’Honneur_. Governor and Mrs. Morgan, Mr. Bancroft the historian, and Mrs. Bancroft, Colonel and Mrs. Abraham Van Buren, with others, were to dance in it. Mrs. Morgan had forgotten all she had learned of dancing in early childhood, so she at once took dancing lessons. Fernando Wood was then Mayor of New York. The great event of the evening was to be the opening quadrille, and the rush to be near it was so great that the floor gave way and in tumbled the whole centre of the stage. I stood up in the first tier, getting a good view of the catastrophe. The Duke of Newcastle, with the Prince, who, as it happened, was advancing to the centre of the stage, followed by all who were to dance in the quadrille, at once retired with the Prince to the reception room, while Mr. Renwick, the architect, and a gang of carpenters got to work to floor over the chasm. I well remember the enormous form of old Isaac Brown, sexton of Grace Church, rushing around and encouraging the workmen. A report had been spread that the Duke would not allow the Prince to again appear on the stage. In the mean while, the whole royal party were conversing in groups in the reception room. The Prince had been led into a corner of the room by the Mayor’s daughter, when the Duke, feeling the young lady had had fully her share of his Royal Highness, was about to interrupt them, when our distinguished magistrate implored him not to do so. “Oh, Duke,” he exclaimed, “let the young people alone, they are enjoying themselves.” The stage made safe, the quadrille was danced, to the amusement of the assembled people. The old-fashioned curtseys, the pigeon-wings, and genuflexions only known to our ancestors were gone through with dignity and repose. Mrs. Van Buren, who had presided over the White House during Martin Van Buren’s presidency, has repeatedly since discussed this quadrille with me, declaring she was again and again on the point of laughing at the grotesque figures cut by the dancers.