inducing many people to buy the tickets, which sold at a dollar apiece,
and were good for "one gent and a lady," and entitled the bearer to a
hat-check without extra charge.

In the flutter of preparation all ranks were temporarily levelled, and
social barriers taken down with the mutual consent of those separated by
them; the night-clerk so far unbent as to personally request the colored
hall-boy Number Eight to play a banjo solo at the concert, which was to
fill in the pauses between the dances, and the chambermaids timidly
consulted with the lady telegraph operator and the lady in charge of the
telephone, as to whether or not they intended to wear hats.

And so every employee on every floor of the hotel was working
individually for the success of the ball, from the engineers in charge
of the electric light plant in the cellar, to the night-watchman on the
ninth story, and the elevator-boys who belonged to no floor in
particular.

Miss Celestine Terrell, who was Mrs. Grahame West in private life, and
young Grahame West, who played the part opposite to hers in the Gilbert
and Sullivan Opera that was then in the third month of its New York run,
were among the honored patrons of the Hotel Salisbury. Miss Terrell, in
her utter inability to adjust the American coinage to English standards,
and also in the kindness of her heart, had given too generous tips to
all of the hotel waiters, and some of this money had passed into the
gallery window of the Broadway Theatre, where the hotel waiters had
heard her sing and seen her dance, and had failed to recognize her
young husband in the Lord Chancellor's wig and black silk court dress.
So they knew that she was a celebrated personage, and they urged the
_maître d'hôtel_ to invite her to the ball, and then persuade her to