This is the core of that dread tribunal which we tremble to offend. It is indeed a hard tyrant, if it can succeed in chaining us to its car, after the pleasures which it dispenses have lost their flavor for us. But, unfortunately, half mankind acknowledge this species of bondage, and we must presume voluntarily, or at least passively. Were it not that this thraldom is so unspeakably sad, it would seem such a farce, if looked upon dispassionately from without! One might almost liken a ball or great official reception in one of the capitals of fashion to the mediæval Dance of Death. The scene is brilliant with deceptive gaiety; the whole surface of society ripples with smiles; the maskers all wear their brightest garments and their stereotyped badges of mirth. There, in the doorway, stands a lovely woman, in rose‐color from head to foot—a cherub’s face enshrined in a sunset cloud, so perhaps an artist would fancy. She smiles bewitchingly, and coquets with her fan, while talking to a gray‐bearded hero from India. But she has made up her mind to sacrifice her honor to her love; tomorrow, at dawn, she will leave her husband’s home and her baby’s cradle; and, poor victim! she is panting under the weight of this wretched secret even while she listens to old‐world gallantry from her fatherly admirer. Not far from her stands another fair form, not more pure in outward semblance, hardly less beautiful—a gifted woman, a true wife, smiling and conversing as calmly as any one in the room; but she knows that she has a fatal internal disease, and that at any moment death might suddenly overtake her. Not to alarm her husband, she joins in every festivity, carrying her secret with her as the Spartan did the fox who was gnawing at his bosom. Amid the whirl of the dance, you perhaps single out that young girl, fair, fresh, seventeen. She is not as happy as she seems; her eyes roam shyly around; there is one whom she both longs and dreads to see, for she is not sure whether she will not find him by the side of her school friend, now her rival. And among the men, how many, beneath their masks, bear sorrowing or anxious hearts! That elderly man, so calmly listening to a fluent diplomate, knows that to‐morrow it will be noised abroad that he is bankrupt—utterly ruined. When he leaves this gay scene to‐night, it will be for the railway, which will bear him out of the country in a few hours. Yonder pale man, who wears his regulation smile so listlessly that you cannot help likening it to a garment loosely hung, is here in the interest of a friend, and is waiting an opportunity to speak a word of cordial recommendation to a ministerial acquaintance, formerly a college friend, now a power in the cabinet. His heart is heavy with a private grief; his child lies dangerously ill at home, and his poor distracted wife needs his comfort and support; but, true to his word, he forgets himself for an hour or two, that he may not