First, the Honorable Gentleman threw his whole weight upon his left leg, elevated one ear as though intently listening, and tapped distinctly upon the floor with his right heel the number of the district. Then came a confused scuffling, first upon one foot and then upon the other, to represent the hurry and excitement of getting the machine out of the house and whirling her to the scene of the conflagration. The next figure, performed alternately upon the toe, heel, and side of the shoe, was an imitation of the noble machine in motion; the whole winding up with the Honorable Gentleman's seizing his partner around the waist and plunging into a polka, symbolizing the gallant fireman's rescue of a consuming female from a sixth-story window. This beautiful dance, my boy, was considered an unanswerable argument in favor of a Volunteer Fire Department; but its finishing effect was somewhat marred by a piercing note from the famous night-key bugle of the Mackerel Brass Band: who, in an enfeebled state of mind, was found wandering about the palace a trifle intoxicated, and received prompt direction to the apartments of Detective Baker. After witnessing, also, the noted walk-around known as the Revenue Stamp, we joined the march for supper, and I sweetly expressed to Captain Villiam Brown my fear of being crowded from the eatables. "Oh!" says Villiam, catching his case-bottle just in time to save it from sliding through his ruffles to the floor; "I shall work upon human Instink." Here, this ornament of our National Mackerel organization inserted an elbow under the right ear of a fair being in blue just before us, and says she: "I don't admire to see you men treating ladies in that manner. The ideor!" "Ah, Mrs. Nubbins," says Villiam, pleasantly, "when your father, the milkman, used to serve our house, I"-- "Here--you can pass, sir," said the fair being in blue; and Captain Villiam Brown walked forward deliberately upon the trailing skirts of a beauteous object in pink. "You're tearing my things--creature!" "Ah!" says Villiam, abstractedly, to me, "you don't remember stand Number Twelve, Fulton Market, where Miss Poodlem's grandmother used to"-- "There's plenty of room here, sir," observed the beauteous object in pink, and Captain Villiam Brown accidentally brushed against a beatitude in white. "Plebeian!" "My fren," says Villiam, as though he and I were entirely alone together on a desert island, "when old Binks gave up the soap-boiling business last fall, and came to"-- "Did you wish to pass, sir?" said the beatitude in white; and we soon found ourselves beside the banquet board, where all went merry as a fire-bell.