good authority that I once danced a hornpipe at the wedding-breakfast of a maritime relation of mine; but the exploit, if ever accomplished, was due more, I opine, to the salmon and cucumber of the nuptial feast than to the _certaminis gaudia_ of dancing. I essayed seriously once more to waltz at a Kursaal ball at a German watering-place. How I tore a lady’s dress, how I tripped myself up, how I was covered with shame, and had the finger of scorn pointed at me, are yet matters of history at Bubbelbingen Schlaggasenberg. Thither I will return no more. Again, when I visited Russia, the first letter of introduction I presented on my arrival at St. Petersburg brought me an invitation to a grand ball. It was—Oh, horror! a diplomatic ball; there were not half a dozen persons in plain clothes in the ball-room; and I stood lonely and forlorn among a crowd of brilliant guardsmen, be-starred and be-ribboned ministers, plenipotentiaries, and embroidered _attachés_, who are proverbially the best dancers in Europe. I had not even the miserable safety-valve of crossing over and talking to the non-dancing dowagers, for, according to Russian custom—one which would delight the irreverent Mr. Spurgeon—the ladies remain at one end of the _salon_, and the gentlemen at the other—a relic of Orientalism—and in strict isolation, during the intervals between the dances. I was in despair, and about either to rush out or to recite “My name is Norval,” with a view towards exciting curiosity and inspiring terror, when the gracious lady who did the honours for the ball-giving minister, who was a bachelor, asked me if I didn’t dance? I didn’t say that I had a sprained ankle, that I was hot, or tired, but I told the truth for once, and said honestly that I couldn’t. “Don’t you smoke, then?” she continued, glancing at me with a sort of pitying expression, as though she were thinking, “I wonder what this gawky Englishman _can_ do?” I replied that I could smoke a little; whereupon, with her own fair hands, she opened a door and inducted me to an apartment, where a score of Boyards and secretaries of legation were smoking Havannahs, playing _préférence_, and sipping whisky-punch, and where I stopped till two o’clock in the morning, became very popular, and positively sang a comic song. At evening parties in England, alas! they seldom have a smoking-room, and so I don’t go to them. A non-dancing man becomes speedily known in society, and the women shun him.