One “institution,” offering a shadowy and dangerous substitute for more legitimate female association, deserves a more peculiar notice. This is the “Hurdy-Gurdy” house. As soon as the men have left off work, these places are opened, and dancing commences. Let the reader picture to himself a large room, furnished with a bar at one end--where champagne at $12 (in gold) per bottle, and “drinks” at twenty-five to fifty cents, are wholesaled, (correctly speaking)--and divided, at the end of this bar, by a railing running from side to side. The outer enclosure is densely crowded (and, on particular occasions, the inner one also) with men in every variety of garb that can be seen on the continent. Beyond the barrier, sit the dancing women, called “hurdy-gurdies,” sometimes dressed in uniform, but, more generally, habited according to the dictates of individual caprice, in the finest clothes that money can buy, and which are fashioned in the most attractive styles that fancy can suggest. On one side is a raised orchestra. The music suddenly strikes up, and the summons, “Take your partners for the next dance,” is promptly answered by some of the male spectators, who paying a dollar in gold for a ticket, approach the ladies’ bench, and--in style polite, or otherwise, according to antecedents--invite one of the ladies to dance. The number being complete, the parties take their places, as in any other dancing establishment, and pause for the performance of the introductory notes of the air. Let us describe a first class dancer--“sure of a partner every time”--and her companion. There she stands at the head of the set. She is of middle height, of rather full and rounded form; her complexion as pure as alabaster, a pair of dangerous looking hazel eyes, a slightly Roman nose, and a small and prettily formed mouth. Her auburn hair is neatly banded and gathered in a tasteful, ornamented net, with a roll and gold tassels at the side. How sedate she looks during the first figure, never smiling till the termination of “promenade, eight,” when she shows her little white hands in fixing her handsome brooch in its place, and settling her glistening ear-rings. See how nicely her scarlet dress, with its broad black band round the skirt, and its black edging, sets off her dainty figure. No wonder that a wild mountaineer would be willing to pay--not one dollar, but all that he has in his purse, for a dance and an approving smile from so beautiful a woman.