STATE OF MARKETS ILLUSTRATED.
Jute.—A quiet feeling, with small Sales.
Lady Henrietta Shimmers' long-talked-of Dance came off yesterday evening, at her recherché little mansion in North-west Bayswater, and was a great success. A handsome second-hand slip of Dutch carpet was laid down on the pavement outside the Hall-door, and from an early hour in the afternoon afforded a theme for much favourable comment in the immediate neighbourhood. The staircase had been, with the aid of half-a-dozen night-lights and a profusion of homemade paper flowers, turned into a perfect fairyland, the illusion becoming the more perfect the further the spectator receded. The one purple and green Hungarian, who attended with his trombone to represent that celebrated band of musicians, supplied the dance music with much spirit, while those noted viveurs, capable of expressing an opinion on the subject of supper, declare that the South-American tinned oysters, and the seventeen-shilling Roumanian champagne, with which they washed them down, were both, in their way, respectively, in the shape of refreshment, quite the most remarkable things they had met with anywhere this season. The company was select and distinguished. Mrs. Jippling, who brought her two chubby-faced, pretty daughters, both in ditch-water-coloured cotton, was a simple blaze of Birmingham paste and green-glass emeralds, and with her pompadour of yellow satin bed curtain, trimmed with chiffons of scarlet bell-ropes, looped up tastefully with bunches of cordons d'onions d'Espagne à la blanchisseuse, was the centre of pleasurable astonishment wherever she went. Lady Pickover also created quite a sensation, being a perfect dream in orange worsted. Miss Mugallow attracted a good deal of notice, wearing the celebrated heavily enamelled plated family Holly-hocks, and several débutantes in bright arsenical Emerald Green, who had not much to recommend them in the way of good looks, came in for a fair amount of cynically disagreeable comment. The dance terminated at an early hour in the morning, it being eventually brought to a conclusion by a little riot in the hall, caused by the linkman (who, owing to his potations, had not been very steady after midnight) endeavouring to make off with the hat-and-umbrella-stand, a feat which brought the police on to the premises with a suggestion, that "as things seemed getting a bit lively inside, perhaps the concern had better come to a finish." The proceedings shortly after this, were brought to an abrupt conclusion.
Two young men of aristocratic appearance, and otherwise faultless dress, were observed in the Park on Monday, in boots of ordinary leather. This breach of the convenances has excited much comment in the fashionable world to which they belong.
A curious sight was yesterday witnessed in Piccadilly. A gentleman well known in Society and in Politics lost his hat, which was run over, but not otherwise damaged, by a passing omnibus. The Honourable Gentleman's exclamation has been the subject of considerable remark in the Lobby of the House.
A careful investigator has been occupied in calculating the amount of roof accommodation available for the cats of the Metropolis. Dividing London according to Parliamentary districts, and subdividing these parochially and by streets (due allowance being, of course, made for wear and tear and removals), he has reached the remarkable conclusion, that every cat can command exactly one two-hundredth part of a roof. In this calculation kittens have been neglected.
What is this I hear about the Officers of the Sheriff of a County not a hundred miles from the Metropolis, refusing to be present at Mrs. Leo Hunter's grand reception in Lower Chelsea, to meet the youngest son of His Highness the Rajah of Jamjam, Alikhan Indoore? Was it because Mrs. H. forgot to ask their wives?
The great feature of Mrs. Duit Cheepeley's Fancy Dress Pic-nic at Burnham Beeches will be, that every guest will bring his own hamper. The hostess herself, as Ceres, the Goddess of Plenty, will provide the corkscrews only.
Lieut.-Colonel Contre Jumpere, of the 28th Volunteer Battalion of the Diddlesex Regiment (Shoreditch Sharpshooters), on Saturday last entertained the officers under his command at a déjeuner à deux plats in the palatial restaurant of which he is Managing Director.
Messrs. Brown, Jones, and Robinson have met Mr. Stanley. Mr. Stanley is reported to have said that he will not meet them again.
At the last moment it is reported that the engagement of the great African Explorer with Mrs. Snookes to meet at five o'clock tea Sir Joseph and Lady Smuggings is indefinitely postponed.
"Robert" writes to us about "The Ewents of the Week." He says:—
"The City Acaddemy, which it's on the Tems Embankment, opened on Toosday, and I'm told as about a thowsend pupils went a scrambling in there, as hurly as 9 a clock, with their shiny morning faces, and with their scratchels on their backs, as the Poet says, and with their lunches in 'em, as praps the Poet didn't kno of; and arterwards, the Lord Mare and his Sherryffs went to Epping Forest and dined at a Pick Nick with a lot of Werderers, whatever they may be, and some common Counselmen, but, strange to say, they didn't have no Wenson! so they made Game of one another. They didn't arsk that Mr. Percy Lindley, who's allers a finding fault with 'em for cutting so many trees down and then cutting 'em up. They ort to have known from their long xperience, that a jolly good dinner woud most likely have made him hopen his mouth, and shut his eyes, and hold his Tung, like a gennelman."
"At a meeting at 'Good Old Bethnal Green,' as a werry lowd woiced gennelman called it, it was enounced that Mr. Passmore Edwards, the howner of the howdacious hapenny 'Hecko,' had promised to give 'em £20,000 to bild 'em a new Library with! when the lowd woiced gennelman ginerously enounced that he woud buy a coppy of that paper the werry next day! If that isn't grattetude, what is?"
A Cambridge Mathematician of repute has just concluded a careful and exhaustive calculation, by which he maintains that if all the pork-chops eaten in London in a week were placed in a row, they would reach from Camberwell to the Isle of Wight; and if piled in a heap on each other, would form a mound half as high again as Primrose Hill.
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