So much for the working side of the problem. The playing side--outside whisky-shops, which I will assume the young Englishman means to keep clear of--ought also to be looked fairly in the face before the experiment is tried. Perhaps the most direct way to bring it home to inquirers will be to quote from the letter of a young English public-school boy who has lately finished his first year as a cowboy on the cattle-ranche of one of the big companies:-- _Friday night_ we had quite a time. We went to an exhibition of the home talent of----, and really of all shows this was the worst I ever saw. One man, the town barber, and our greatest “society man,” played a nigger, and played it so well that one could not help fancying he has at one time been a “profesh.” The rest were so dull and such sticks that it made him shine more than ever. After the home talent, there was a “social hop,” at which Jerry and I shone as being the “bored young men.” You can, of course, see why I was bored; and Jerry, he is from Ohio, and of course------ cannot compete with Ohio. However, as Jerry was somewhat of a great man, the quadrilles being all called by him--i.e. he stood on the stage and shouted, “balance all,” “swing your partners,” “lady’s chain,” at the right time--we had to stay, and more or less to dance. Jerry took great pains to find me partners worthy of a man who had danced in a dress-coat. He did not succeed but once, when he introduced me to a very lively little school-lady, “marm,” I should say; the rest were very wooden in movement and conversation. The school-marm amused me very much. She had not long returned from the--------- University, where all the young ladies, though they met the other sex at school, were not allowed to speak to them at other times. The girls were allowed to give dances, but she and three or four others thought that a “hen-pie” dance was too much of a fraud, so they contrived a plan by which they could get three or four dancing men in without going to the door. They fastened a pulley on to the beam where the bell hung, and with the aid of a clothes-basket and a rope they spoiled the “hen-pie” with two or three young men. This plan worked well several times, till one night three or four of them were exerting themselves to get a very heavy boy up, when instead of a boy they perceived the bearded face of the head-master. In horror they turned loose the rope and fled, leaving him twelve feet from the ground, hanging on by his fingers to the window-sill, from which, as no one would respond to his call for help, he finally dropped. The young lady told it much better than I have. Jerry was very popular as a “caller.” I noticed he understood his audience well, and whenever they got a figure they didn’t know, he came in with “grand chain,” which they all knew and performed very nicely; so you would see a whole set lost in the intricate feat of “visiting” (say) and all muddled up, when you would hear the grand voice of Jerry, “grand