on my slippers, kept me at all times prepared for the streets. Cabbage
(a favorite dish) was quietly discarded from the dinner-table. My
library was turned into a nursery for Master B.

The mute, unresisting manner in which I surrendered my fading glory was
surprising. I was appalled in contemplating it; I am breathless now with
indignation in referring to it. In short, like Daniel and the Hebrew
children, I went up through much tribulation; but my deliverance (oh,
how I daily and hourly thank Divine Providence for that blessed moment!)
was at hand.

It was the evening of an election for an alderman, I think; but, as in
our retired portion of the city none but the lowest vagabonds gave
politics a thought, there was comparatively no excitement. Mrs. Lawk,
from the wide circle of society in which she moved, had invited a goodly
number to an entertainment. Even our inordinate supply of sofas were
filled, and scarcely a chair in the house remained unoccupied. In a rash
moment I asked two or three of my own cronies; but not many minutes
elapsed ere both my companions and myself were made to feel the folly of
the temerity.

Ignorant of dancing, unskilled in whist or the art of polite
conversation, we were terminating our third hour of judicious snubbing
in a corner. Mrs. McSimpkins had just concluded a battle-piece of great
length and power, when the rehearsal of our shuddering comments was
suddenly banished by the deafening roll of a drum. I rushed to the
window, and, to my horror, discovered a torchlight procession halted
immediately in front of the house. Perhaps a hundred men, in all stages
of political enthusiasm and intoxication, surrounded by a crowd of
wretched women and girls, waved their lights with demoniac frenzy, and,