miss the golden opportunity on which hang the hopes of his friend’s whole future. In the centre of the dance, the tall form of a Life‐guardsman is prominent; to‐morrow he will have disappeared from the world, and only his intimates will know that he had long determined to enter a Catholic seminary, and study for the priesthood. He did not want his decision discussed beforehand, and took the best means of silencing curiosity by appearing the gayest of the gay. Every one here to‐night has a long record oppressing his heart—something that makes the present scene quite secondary in his thoughts, and that causes in his breast a bitter feeling of reaction against the mockery of which he forms a part. And this is the thing called pleasure! How little we know of the people with whom we spend our lives—those that touch our hands daily, and speak to us commonplace words of courtesy! Surely the bees in their hive, the ants on their hill, the beavers and prairie‐dogs of a “village,” know each other better than we do our next‐door neighbors! We cut the thread of a guilty reverie by some observation about the weather, or we laugh the unmeaning laugh that supplies the place of an answer, perhaps inconvenient to ourselves, and this laugh jars on the tenderest memories of a sorrowful past uppermost just then in our neighbor’s mind. There is something appalling in all this—the tragedy lies so near the surface, and we tread upon it so often! The trivial aspect of society is oftener still before us—the inanity of morning calls, the gossip of a provincial town, the petty local interests that absorb three‐fourths of mankind. Why, we wonder, should general conversation invariably breed gossip, while a _tête‐à‐tête_ sometimes elicits real information and rational interchange of ideas? The same person who in a company of five or six has nothing but commonplace remarks to offer, often opens out in private though yet only ceremonial conversation, and startles you by original opinions and valuable suggestions. The French are perhaps the only people who shine in mixed conversation; they have the talent of _causerie_—a thing that with us hardly exists; the very word is untranslatable. A Frenchwoman can be sparkling where we can only be dull; she can dance on a cobweb, while we should break down on a cart‐rope. Gallic vivacity can make even the details of the kitchen amusing, while we should be insufferably prosy on the same subject.