How Sixty Thousand Dollars were Spent—Something wrong: “’Twas ever Thus”—Recollection of another Festival—How “the dust” was Raised—A Fine Opportunity for a Few Naughty Words—Lost Jewels—The Colored Folks in a Fix—Overpowered by Numbers—Six Thousand People Clamoring for their Clothes!—“Promiscuous” Property—A Magnificent “Grab”—Weeping on Window-ledges—Left Desolate—Walking under Difficulties—The Exploits of Two Old Gentlemen—Horace Greeley Loses his Old White Hat—He says Naughty Words of Washington—Seeking the Lost—Still Cherished by Memory—Some People Remind General Chipman—“Regardless of Expense”—A Ball-Room Built of Wooden Laths and Muslin—A Little Too Cold—Gay Decorations—How “Delicate” Women can Endure the Cold—Modesty in Scanty Garments—The President Frozen—The “Cherubs, Perched up Aloft,” Refuse to Sing—On the Presidential Platform—Ladies of Distinction—Half-frozen Beauties—“They did not Make a Pretty Picture”—Why and Wherefore?—A Protest against “Shams”—A Stolid Tanner who Fought his Way. Untold time, and trouble, and sixty thousand dollars were expended on the last inauguration ball building, and yet there was something the matter with the inaugural ball. There is always something the matter with every inauguration ball. When I wish to think of a spot especially suggestive of torments, I think of an inauguration ball. There was the one before the last, held in the Treasury Building. The air throughout the entire building was perforated with a fine dust ground till you felt that you were taking in with every breath a myriad homœopathic doses of desiccated grindstone. The agonies of that ball can never be written. There are mortals dead in their grave because of it. There are mortals who still curse, and swear, and sigh at the thought of it. There are diamonds, and pearls, and precious garments that are not to their owners because of it. The scenes in those cloak and hat rooms can never be forgotten by any who witnessed them. The colored messengers, called from their posts in the Treasury to do duty in these rooms, received hats and wraps with perfect facility, and tucked them in loop-holes as it happened. But to give them back, each to its owner, that was impossible. Not half of them could read numbers, and those who could soon grew bewildered, overpowered, ill-tempered and impertinent under the hosts that advanced upon them for cloaks and hats.