"Make yourselves at home now, boys, only don't spit on the carpet. If there's a fire while the swarry is goin' on, I'll let the old woman listen for the district and announce it from the airy. We'll keep the winders up, and when the hall-bell rings, you fellers as has to leave, can just slip down onto the front stoop without breaking up the entire swarry."
Here the large-hearted aldermanic chap was called hastily downstairs to attend the bar, several army officers having just arrived in the ward, and the "swarry" commenced as merrily as a fire in a carpenter's shop. It set in for a heavy dance at about eleven o'clock, and then were seen as many elaborate verses in the poetry of motion, as any pair of eyes could wish to enjoy. "Fifty's" foreman, who danced with a very pretty dotted muslin, produced a very striking and picturesque effect by rolling his inexpressibles up over his boots, and giving a life-like imitation of the working of an engine with his heels and toes; whereupon the assistant foreman of "Thirty's Truck" suddenly threw off his dress-coat and appeared in full red shirt, simultaneously striking into a fine, artistic shuffle, intended to imitate the hauling-in and reeling-up of the wet hose after a conflagration. These and other graceful novelties were greatly admired by the ladies, each of whom said so many spicy and spiteful things about the other's bare arms and forward manners, that a stranger might have taken them all for the very cream of Fifth Avenue or any other Best Society.
It was about midnight when "Fifty's" foreman, growing reckless with the passionate splendors of excitement, scuffled away with his flushed dotted muslin to a luxurious chintz sofa near one of the windows, and intemperately whispered in her ear, "Miss Perkins, it were madness for me longer to conceal my insanity, and to remain silent would but render me speechless. Here let me lay my heart and trumpet at your feet, and"—
She had fainted! Ay, sir, swooned!
Instantly the whole brilliant saloon was in confusion; the dancing ceased, the dust commenced to settle, and the assistant foreman of "Thirty's Truck" was seen to put on his coat.
"Bring your hose here, quick, and play on her face!" shouted "Fifty's" foreman, half-crazed by what he had done. But the dotted muslin's mother now clutched her in her arms, and says she, "Let's get her into the dressing-chamber, and somebody bring a little sally wolatile."
Here another dowager seized an arm of the fainting girl, and the two bore her tenderly into the retiring-room, followed by some two or three sympathizing young ladies. And now, my boy, it becomes my delicate duty to hastily sketch a scene which the masculine pen cannot too carefully touch upon. It being one of the principles of woman's nature that some relaxations must be admitted in her toilet before she can revive from syncope, the second dowager commenced to relieve the fainting fair one of such articles of fashionable addenda as might retard her recovery. She took off her side-curls and back-hair and laid them upon a table; with great care she removed her upper teeth and placed them upon a chair; softly wetting a corner of her handkerchief in her mouth she effectually wiped away the eyebrows and a part of the cheek of the young sufferer; and she was proceeding to make other dissections which I shall dismiss with the remark that they are merely matters of form, when the patient gave a gentle sigh as she rested in her mother's arms, and says the mother to the dowager:—
"There, Mrs. Jobbins, I guess you needn't do any more." Mrs. Jobbins gave a sagacious look at the patient, and says she:
"Very true, mem; she is getting better. It wont take us many minutes to reconstruct her."
"I beg your parding, Mrs. Jobbins," says the maternal, shaking her cap,—"I beg your parding Mrs. Jobbins; but your language is ineddicated, highly; you should say 'restore' her."