On that memorable night of the Cable Celebration, when so many paper lanterns and so many enlightened New Yorkers were sold in the name of De Sauty,--when all the streets and all the people were alive with gas,--when we fired off rockets and Roman candles and spread-eagle speeches in illustrious exuberance,--when the city children lit their little dips, and the City Fathers lit their City Hall,--when we hung out our banners, and clanged our bells, and banged our guns,--when there was Glory to God in the highest steeple, and Peace on Earth in the lowest cellar,--I drifted down the Broadway current of a mighty flood of folk, a morose and miserable sentimentalist. I had seen locomotives, those Yankee Juggernauts, drive, roaring and ruthless, over the beautiful bodies of fine old travellers' fictions; and once, in Burmah, I had beheld a herd of stately elephants plunge and scoot, scampering and squealing, like pigs on a railroad, away from the steam scream of a new-fangled man-of-war. I had witnessed those monstrous sacrileges, and survived,--had even, when locomotive and steamer were passed, picked up my beautiful fictions again, and called back my panic-stricken elephants with the gong of imagination; but here were Gulliver and Aladdin and Sinbad the Sailor torn from their golden thrones, and this insolent De Sauty, crowned with zinc and copper and sceptred with gutta-percha, set up in their places to the tune of "All Eight." "I will build you a house of gold, and you shall be my Padshah Begum, some day," said the whimsically cruel King of Oude to Nuna, his favorite Cashmere dancing-girl. For a while Nima's dreams were golden. But the time came when the King was not in the vein. He followed vacantly her most enchanting undulations and yawned listlessly. "Boppery bopp!" he exclaimed, presently, "but this bores us. Is there no better fun? Let us have a quail-fight, Khan." The Khan rose to order in the quails. The King gazed on Nuna with languid satiety. "I wonder how she would look, Europe-fashion." "Nothing is easier, Sire, than to see how she would look," said the Khan, as he returned with the quails. So a gown, and other articles of European female attire, were sent for to the Khan's house; for he was a married man; and when they were brought, Nuna was told to retire and put them on. The quail-fight proceeded on the table. Then Nuna reappeared in her new costume. A more miserable transformation it is hardly possible to imagine. The clothes hung loosely about her, in forlorn dowdyness. She felt that she was ridiculous. All grace was gone, all beauty. It was distressing to witness her mortified plight. The King and the Khan laughed heartily, while scalding tears coursed down poor Nuna's cheeks. The other nautch-girls, jealous, had no pity for her; they chuckled at her disgrace, turning up their pretty noses, as they whispered,--"Serve her right,--the brazen minx!"