Camera led the conversation in our corner of the room to the subject of optical illusions, when some one of course suggested the hat experiment. There is probably nothing the proportions of which are so deceptive as a hat. Reader, if you have never tried the experiment, take a stick and point out on the wall how high you think a hat would reach from the floor if placed on its crown, as represented in our sketch.
Aunty Delluvian, the first to try, took the stick and boldly measured off a distance of between two and three feet, and utterly laughed to scorn the moderate persons who satisfied themselves with ten inches. After each of the measurements was marked with a pencil, and the hat itself put beside them, showing every one to be wrong, Aunty's amazement knew no bounds. Indeed, she would not be satisfied till we brought our own hat to convince her that some deception had not been practised.
This was Aunty Delluvian's first visit to the Adams', having only recently been introduced through the agency of Nix. I was, therefore, not unprepared for some criticism on our friends; but when the good lady, towards the close of the evening, took us to one side and said confidentially and emphatically, nodding her head at the same time knowingly, "No flippery, flummery. I like her!" we were a little surprised, the statement was so emphatic and yet so vague. That was all she said, walking away briskly when she had so delivered herself, as though she had rendered a final verdict. To which of the family did she refer? To Mrs. Adams, we presume, and yet she might have said something about the other members of the family. She is a queer creature is Aunty Delluvian.
We are disposed to think that the ART of entertaining is rarely if ever regarded as an ART, and certainly never treated as such. We, however, on this occasion, laid our plans and arranged our forces with as much care and skill as a general exercises in laying out a campaign. We have as profound a respect for a good commissary as ever did Napoleon Bonaparte. We had our reserve, too, and our signal corps, so that should the battle waver at any moment, it might be immediately set going again. Amongst other resources, we had a number of surprise pictures concealed in a certain place, which were to be produced when occasion might require. One of these will be found on opposite page, and comprises fifteen faces in one. Pictures of this kind always amuse, and are fine provocatives of conversation.
FIFTEEN FACES IN ONE.—See page [229].
Reader, when you give a party, do not bring your entire force into action at first; always have a reserve to fall back upon.
We saw a whole group which was showing alarming symptoms of demoralization rallied with a pocket-handkerchief. Nix saw the emergency, drew his handkerchief, tied one end round the tip of his finger, on which, with a few dots of the pen, he had indicated a comic face, and threw himself into the dispirited crew, exclaiming: