After the band arrived and was stationed in the conservatory out of sight, an attempt was made to get up a dance. Spout introduced Dropper to a princess of his acquaintance, and Dropper, as in duty bound, asked her to waltz, and actually proceeded to carry out his intention.
As some sixty other couples attempted the same feat at the same time, and as there wasn't room for any one man to dance without stepping on the heels of his neighbor, the scene instantly assumed a peculiar appearance. Dropper first whisked his partner against a flower girl and upset her basket, then against a Paul Pry, and demolished his horn spectacles, then he tumbled her into the stomach of a Falstaff and rolled him into the window curtains, then he himself stepped on the favorite corn of a tall Hamlet, and pushed his elbows into a Shylock and broke his false hooked nose, and they both concluded their gyrations by upsetting a couple of brigands, and marching deliberately over the prostrate bodies of Helen McGregor and a matchboy in their progress to a sofa, which they finally reached in an exhausted condition; the lady wanted some water, which Remington started to get but didn't come back, inasmuch as he hurt his shins by tumbling over a chair and fell to the floor, carrying with him in his descent a fairy in one hand and a Fitz James in the other. The crowd immediately closed around him, so that he could not rise, and, as he was involuntarily reposing directly upon the hot air register, he was more than half cooked before he got rescued out.
The attempt to dance created also no small amount of confusion among the others, about twenty-five of whom were precipitated into the conservatory and dispersed through the orchestra. King Lear landed with his head in a French horn, and Byron's Corsair was seen to demolish two violins with his hands at precisely the same time he kicked both feet through the bass drum.
Supper came at last, and the guests were fed in installments, as many getting near the tables as could crowd into the rooms. Jellies, creams, fruits, and the more substantial articles of the repast, were devoured, and scattered over the carpets, and over the dresses of the assembled multitude, in about equal quantities. Champagne corks flew, and all the men of whatever nation, trade, or occupation represented in that incongruous assemblage, seemed to understand perfectly well what champagne was. Kings drank with peasants, brigands touched glasses with monks, and Shylock the Jew took a friendly drink with her majesty the Queen of Sheba.
After supper the smash recommenced, and things grew worse, and the characters, by continued exertion and repeated accidents, became so changed in appearance by the mutilation of their fancy dresses, that at three o'clock in the morning, no one could have picked out any one of the remaining guests and told whether he was intended for an Italian brigand or an Irish washerwoman.
Our friends reached home about daylight, tired, draggled, disgusted, and drunk. Neither of them undressed, but both slept on the floor in the remains of their fancy costume, and in all their paint; they didn't get their faces clean for ten days, but Remington Dropper had seen the Elephant in one of his Fifth Avenue aspects, and was content.
