A fancy dress-ball in London is slow. The general orders are, “keep moving along.” The man who manages the search-light, from one of the top boxes, probably enjoys the ball the most. He certainly does more to help it. The centre of interest is wherever he will have it. He can make a dull costume bright, and a supper-party in one of the boxes proud; and he can almost remove the gloom caused by the officials in black.
The greatest variety of expressions are to be seen in the audiences that come together at the law courts. There is the never-changing face of the judge, and the ever-changing face of the witness rocking from side to side in his box, and there are the black-robed barristers with small wigs and big fees, and pale law students crowding in at the doors and filling the passage-ways; and in front of the long table that is covered with papers and high hats sit those most interested in what is going on—care-worn parents and women thickly veiled.
In the “Whispering Gallery”—A Small Loan
The most interesting place of amusement for men is the National Sporting Club. Every Monday night during the winter the sports of London meet there in the same building that Colonel Newcome and his son once left because they objected to Captain Costigan’s song. The Colonel would be more amused there now, well-trained and scientific boxers from all the world meet in a roped-in square, surrounded by an orderly crowd of stock-brokers, bankers, and miscellaneous sporting characters, who wait for the best man to win. Then they adjourn to a front room, and around the bar and little tables they talk about by-gone fights and the men and horses whose pictures cover the wall. Some find their way to the Strand, where, in a supper-room called Marble Halls, every variety of sport in all stages of luck, and actors from the neighboring theatres, discuss the fight of the evening round by round.
At the National Sporting Club
A Music Hall audience is the most demonstrative and amusing. It will applaud the longest, hiss the loudest, and sometimes join in the chorus. From the moment the numbers are posted announcing the next turn, it is easy to tell what the performer’s reception will be. On both sides of the orchestra are bars, and when a London barmaid stops work to listen and laugh you may be sure that the turn is a good one. Last winter they paid Dan Leno this compliment. The air is filled with tobacco-smoke, and the calcium-light, on its way from the gallery to the stage, looks like a sunbeam in a dusty hayloft.
