I awoke, with an indistinct idea that I was at a ball, with a jiggy kind of tune whirling through my brain. Pish! I must have been dreaming; so I turned over, and tugged the blankets more tightly round my shoulders, vexed that such a stupid dream should have awoke me. Hark! what on earth is that? ‘Ladies and gents, take your places, salute your partners,’—then crash went two fiddles, crowding out a break-down. Again the voice—‘Half right and left’—and off they went. The sounds of countless feet, scuffling rapidly over a floor, told me, in language not to be mistaken, that a ball was going briskly on very near my head. I sat up, rubbed my eyes, took a long mournful yawn, and began to consider what had best be done. I discovered that a thin wooden partition only intervened betwixt my head and the ball-room; everything rattled to the jigging tune of the music and the dancers; the windows, the doors, the wash-crockery, the bed, all jigged; and I began to feel myself involuntarily nodding to the same measure, and jigging mentally like the rest. Shades of the departed! I could not stand this. Goodby bed, and feathers, and sleep! I may as well dance in reality as in imagination; and abandoning all my anticipated delights, dressed, and entered the ball-room. It was a long room, lighted with candles hung against the wall in tin sconces; the company—if variety is charming—was perfect. The costumes, as a rule, were more suggestive of ease than elegance; scarlet shirts and buckskin ‘pants’ were in the ascendant. The boots as a rule, being of the species known as Wellingtons, were worn outside the trousers, inducing the latter indispensables to assume a bunchiness about the knees, not calculated to display the symmetry of the leg to advantage. Very few had any jackets on, but all, without exception, carried a bowie-knife and six-shooter in their waistbelts. The ladies’ costumes were equally varied: most of them wore bright-coloured muslins, of very large patterns, and showy waist-ribbons, tied behind in a large bow, with streamers down to their heels. The dance was just ‘down’ when I came into the room. I saw a few citizens I had met in the day, but each one seemed to have his ‘fancy gal,’ and any chance of getting an introduction was a vain hope. The fashion, I discovered afterwards, is either to bring or meet your partner at the ball-room, and dance with her, and her only, all the evening.