By the Farnesian Hercules! no Roman sylph in her city's decline would
ever have called the sun-god, Mr. Apollo. We hope that Houri melted
entirely away in the window, but we certainly did not stay to see.

Passing out toward the supper-room we encountered two young
men. "What, Hal," said one, "_you_ at Mrs. Potiphar's?" It seems
that Hal was a sprig of one of the old "families." "Well, Joe," said
Hal, a little confused, "it _is_ a little strange. The fact is I
didn't mean to be here, but I concluded to compromise by coming,
_and not being introduced to the host_." Hal could come, eat
Potiphar's supper, drink his wines, spoil his carpets, laugh at his
fashionable struggles, and affect the puppyism of a foreign Lord,
because he disgraced the name of a man who had done some service
somewhere, while Potiphar was only an honest man who made a fortune.

The supper-room was a pleasant place. The table was covered with a
chaos of supper. Everything sweet and rare, and hot and cold, solid
and liquid, was there. It was the very apotheosis of gilt
gingerbread. There was a universal rush and struggle. The charge of
the guards at Waterloo was nothing to it. Jellies, custards,
oyster-soup, ice-cream, wine and water, gushed in profuse cascades
over transparent precipices of _tulle_, muslin, gauze, silk, arid
satin. Clumsy boys tumbled against costly dresses and smeared them
with preserves,--when clean plates failed, the contents of plates
already used were quietly "chucked" under the table--heeltaps of
champagne were poured into the oyster tureens or overflowed upon
plates to clear the glasses--wine of all kinds flowed in torrents,
particularly down the throats of very young men, who evinced their
manhood by becoming noisy, troublesome, and disgusting, and were