We dined with the __th, and, as customary before going to an evening party, took the "other bottle" of claret that lies beyond the frontier of prudence. In fact, from the lieutenant-colonel down to the newly-joined ensign, there was not a face in the party that did not betray "signs of the times" that boded most favourably for the mirth of the sheriff's ball. We were so perfectly up to the mark, that our major, a Connemara man, said, as we left the mess-room, "a liqueure glass would spoil us." In this acme of our intellectual wealth, we started about eleven o'clock upon every species of conveyance that chance could press into the service. Of hackney coaches there were few--but in jingles, noddies, and jaunting-cars, with three on a side and "one in the well," we mustered strong--Down Barrack-street we galloped, the mob cheering us, we laughing, and I'm afraid shouting a little, too--the watchmen springing their rattles, as if instinctively at noise, and the whole population up and awake, evidently entertaining a high opinion of our convivial qualities. Our voices became gradually more decorous, however, as we approached the more civilized quarter of the town; and with only the slight stoppage of the procession to pick up an occasional dropper-off, as he lapsed from the seat of a jaunting-car, we arrived at length at our host's residence, somewhere in Sackville-street. Had our advent conferred the order of knighthood upon the host, he could not have received us with more "empressement." He shook us all in turn by the hand, to the number of eight and thirty, and then presented us seriatim to his spouse, a very bejewelled lady of some forty years--who, what between bugles, feathers, and her turban, looked excessively like a Chinese pagoda upon a saucer. The rooms were crowded to suffocation--the noise awful--and the company crushing and elbowing rather a little more than you expect where the moiety are of the softer sex. However, "on s'habitue a tout," sayeth the proverb, and with truth, for we all so perfectly fell in with the habits of the place, that ere half an hour, we squeezed, ogled, leered, and drank champagne like the rest of the corporation. "Devilish hot work, this," said the colonel, as he passed me with two rosy-cheeked, smiling ladies on either arm; "the mayor--that little fellow in the punch-coloured shorts--has very nearly put me hors de combat with champagne; take care of him, I advise you."