THE last act was closed, and the curtain fell. My friends immediately left the box. Mr. H---- offered an arm each to his wife and sister, and--you would not expect a lady to wait for her beau!--Miss L---- walked with them, but not without 'a lingering look behind.' The instant they were out of the box, I seized my boot, and attempted to thrust my foot into it; but it had swollen, and the first effort cost me excruciating pain; yet this I did not regard. But all my efforts were vain. I could as easily have thrust an alderman through a key-hole. I seized my pen-knife, and split the offending boot nearly from top to toe. Then planting my foot on the sole, I tied the string of my drawers tightly around the leg, and rushed through the crowd. In my haste, I well-nigh overturned a fat old lady, who was leaning on her son's arm. The old woman cried, 'Oh Lord!' and the youth, in ire, muttered an oath, and raised his cane; but I was two quick for him. I reached the door, amid the screams of the ladies, the deep, though for the most part unspoken, curses of the men, and the cry of 'Seize him!' from the police officers. But my friends and my betrothed, where were they? Lost in the crowd, or shut up in some of the carriages that were pressing around the door? I saw at once that all search was useless. I waited until nearly all had left the house, and then slowly and sadly took my way to my hotel. I went to bed; but the visions of the day were present to my waking thoughts, or haunted my short and troubled slumbers. How often, between sleep and awake, did I long for the boots, and envy the comfortable estate of their free-and-easy wearer, so felicitously described by the author of '_Boots, a Slipshodical Lyric_,' in an early number of this Magazine. ----'What sprawling heels! And holes are cut anigh the spreading toes, As if the ponderous feet in that wide space Had still been 'cabined, cribbed,' and wanted room,-- Or else, that doleful crops of pedal maize, Called by the vulgar corns, had flourished there. I see the wearer plainly. In public haunts He of his self deportment takes no heed, And spitteth evermore. His lips are sealed And juicy, like wind-beparchéd mouth Of ichthyophagous Kamschatkadale; and oft, With three sheets in the wind, in upper tier Midst mirthful Cyprians, he puts his feet Over the box's front, and leaning back, Guffaws and swears, like privateer at sea, Until the pitlings from beneath, exclaim, 'Boots!' 'Trollope!' and he straightway draws them in.' When I rang in the morning, the waiter brought a note. The address was 'pleasingly familiar' to me. I broke the seal, and read: 'Miss L---- will be excused from her engagement to ride with Mr. D---- to-day. Mr. D---- may spare himself the trouble of calling to inquire the reason.' And he did! D. FOOTNOTE: