Mrs. Fraley and her niece, in long trains, received and presented us to their guests. Among them was the lady from Flint who had got the cramp in her leg at Hadrian's Villa, and who lived at the same boarding-house with Mrs. Fraley. Her name was Sampf--“Mrs. Sampf,” they called her. I always have to go to my note-book when I try to think of that name. We always refer to her as the lady whose name sounded like boiling mush. There were also a sad but handsome young woman of the name of Rantone, a Minnesota girl who had married an Italian doctor; Mr. Pike, the whiskered lumber king who was studying the history of the world and whose bust we had surveyed in the studio of De Langueville, and a certain young man connected with one of the embassies. “The count couldn't come,” said Mrs. Fraley. “He wrote that nothing would please him more than to meet Mr. and Mrs. Socrates Pot ter, but that he was, unfortunately, quite ill.” I did not know until then that these good people had come to meet us. “Perhaps you'll help us to appraise our loss by giving me his name,” I suggested. “Oh, it is the wonderful Count Carola!” said she. “He is about the most fascinating creature that I ever saw.” My brain reeled and fell at her feet and called silently for help. In half a second it had picked itself up again. We went into the dining-room. What a fair of jewels and laces and fresh-cut flowers! At eleven o'clock they were going to have a dance--kind of a surprise party! They called it The Ball of the Roses. Our table had a big crop of red and white roses, and in the middle of it was a little fountain among ferns. Its spray fell with a pleasant sound upon water-lilies in a big, mossy bowl. The retired lumber king sat opposite me, and a retired frog sat between us on a lily-pad at the edge of the fountain-bowl. He was a goodsized real frog who was planning to return to active life, I judged, for he sat with alert eyes as if on the lookout for a business opportunity. I observed that he looked hopefully at me when I sat down at the right of Mrs. Fraley, with Mrs. Sampf at my side, as if willing to abandon the frivolous life any minute if I could suggest an opening for an energetic young frog. Mrs. Fraley explained that the frog was tied to the edge of the bowl by a silk thread which was fastened about his neck. I ceased then to fear and suspect him. I could not help thinking how much good Terre Haute money had gone into these decorations, and we should have been just as well pleased without the frog and the fountain. Here we are at last right in the midst of things--grandeur! high life! nobility! abdominal hills and valleys! fair slopes of rolling, open country with their stones imbedded in gold and platinum! toes twinging with gout! faces with the utohel look on them!