“Look here,” says I to Bill Fisher, that was sitting in the Spotted Lion--“look at the conceit of these folks,” says I, “who think that all the world’s to stand still a-reading about their ‘gimp Brandenburghs and buttons’--their ‘buttons and frogs’--their ‘blue facings and turnback’--and such mountebankery.” “It is quite beneath us as men,” says Bill; “not at all like lords of the creation. Now, I can forgive the women--poor little souls!--for having all their flounces and puffings put in the paper. It’s nat’ral for them.” “Why nat’ral?” says I. “Why,” says Bill, “because they know it makes one another savage. Bless you, that’s what they do it for--and nothin’ else.” And then you should have heard how he laughed as he spelt out the paper. “Look here, now,” says he, “here was a lady with a dress looped with bouquets of pink roses; skirt of rich green satin, trimmed with flounces of point-lace and bouquets of roses; white satin shoes with high heels, green rosettes, with diamonds in the centre. Hair powdered, and ornamented with roses and diamonds. Now, isn’t it dreadful, Juniper, that people are to be stopped over their honest pint of porter with stuff like this? What’s ‘satin shoes with high heels’ to all the ’versal world? But then, as I say, the women do it to make one another savage. I’ve often thought, since they like so to print in the papers what clothes they wear, that at the same time they might let the world know what books they read, what pictures they look at--in fact, what sort of dresses they put on their minds. But, to be sure, this would make nobody savage.” This is what Bill Fisher says; but mark, Kitty, I’m not quite of his way of thinking; though, after all, it does seem odd that a young lady should think it worth while to put all her clothes in print for the world to spell over. But the Ball will have done a great deal of good in making us look a hundred years back. How I should like to see the thing tried upon a grand scale! Suppose that everybody in London, just for four-and-twenty hours, out of compliment to the great example set by the Court, should live as if it was 1745. Wouldn’t it be droll? Droll to have the gas out, and set up oil-twinklers! Droll to make the new police put on drab coats, and call the hours like that “venerable institution,” the watch! Droll to have all the rail-trains stopt, and only book passengers for York by the waggon! Droll to stop the steamboats on the river, the omnibuses in the streets; making folks move about in nothing but wherries, hackney-coaches, and sedan-chairs! Droll, too, would it be, to start for Gravesend in the tilt-boat on a two days’ voyage! Well, I hope that all this will be brought about; for if all the folks in London were made to live only four-and-twenty hours of a hundred years ago, I do think that for the rest of their lives they’d shut their mouths about those precious good old times, that some people do now so like to cackle about.