I might delight you with a description of the ball room, but the editors have requested me to the contrary. Some secrets of gorgeous splendor there are which are wisely concealed from the general gaze. But a floor three hundred feet square, and walls as high as the mast of an East Boston clipper, confer ample room for motion; and the unequalled atmosphere of the saloon is perhaps unnecessarily refreshed by fountains of rarest distilled waters. This is also my picture gallery, where all mythology is exhausted by the great painters of the antique; and modern art is thoroughly illustrated by the famous landscapes of both hemispheres. The luxuriant fancy of my favorite artist has suggested unique collocations of aquaria and mossy grottoes in the angles of the apartment, where the vegetable wealth of the tropics rises in perfect bounty and lawless exuberance, and fishes of every hue and shape flash to and fro among the tangled roots, in the light of a thousand lamps. In the centre, I have caused the seats of the orchestra to be hidden at the summit of a picturesque group of rocks, profusely hung with vegetation, and gemmed with a hundred tiny fountains that trickle in bright beads and diamonds into the reservoir at the base. From this eminence, the melody of sixty unequalled performers pervades the saloon, justly diffused, and on all sides the same; unlike the crude arrangements of most modern orchestras, where at one end of the room you are deluged with music, and at the other extremity you distinguish the notes with pain or difficulty. The ceiling, by a rare combination of mechanical ingenuity and artistic inspiration, displays, so as to quite deceive the senses, the heavens with all their stars moving in just and harmonious order. Here on summer nights you see Lyra and Altair triumphantly blazing in the middle sky as they sweep their mighty arch through the ample zenith; and low in the south, the Scorpion crawls along the verge with the red Antares at his heart, and the bright arrows of the Archer forever pursuing him. Here in winter, gazing up through the warm and perfumed air, you behold those bright orbs that immemorially suggest the icy blasts of January: Aldebaran; the mighty suns of Orion; diamond-like Capella; and the clear eyes of the Gemini. Under such influences, with the breath of the tropics in your nostrils, and your heart stirred by the rich melodies of the invisible orchestra, waltzing becomes a sublime passion, in which all your faculties dilate to utmost expansion, and you float out into happy forgetfulness of time and destiny.
Rarely at these fêtes do we dance to other measures than those of the waltz, though at times we find a relief from the luxuriance of that divine rhythm in the cooler cadences of the Schottish. By universal consent and instinct, we banish the quadrille, stiff and artificial; the polka, inelegant and essentially vulgar; and the various hybrid measures with which the low ingenuity of professors has filled society. But we move like gods and goddesses to the sadly joyful strains of Strauss and Weber and Beethoven and Mozart, and the mighty art of these great masters fills and re-creates all our existence.
Sometimes in these divine hours, thrilled by the touch of a companion whose heart beats against and consonantly with mine, I catch glimpses of the possibilities of a free life of the spirit when it shall be released from earth and gravitation, and I conjecture the breadth of a future existence. This will only seem irrational to such as have squeezed out their souls flat between the hard edges of dollars, or have buried them among theologic texts which they are too self-wise to understand. History and the experience of the young are with me.
From twelve to four you sup, when, and as, and where, you will. A succession of little rooms lie open around an atrium, all different as to size and ornament, yet none too large for a single couple, and none too small for the reunion of six. What charming accidents of company and conversation sometimes occur in these Lucullian boudoirs! You pass and repass, come and go, at your own pleasure. Waltzing, and Burgundy, and Love, and Woodcock are here combined into a dramatic poem, in which we are all star performers, and sure of applause. These hours cannot last forever, and the first daybeams that tell of morning, are accompanied by those vague feelings of languor that hint to us that we are mortal. Then we pause, and separate before these faint hints of our imperfection deepen into distasteful monitions, and before our fulness of enjoyment degenerates into satiety. Antiquity has conferred an immortal blessing upon us in bequeathing to us that golden legend, Ne quid nimis;[19] a legend better than all the teachings of Galen, or than all the dialogues of Socrates. For in these brief words are compressed the experiences of the best lives, and Alcibiades and Zeno might equally profit by them. They contain the priceless secret of happiness; and do you, reader, wisely digest them till we meet again.
THE SOLDIER.
[BURNS.]
For gold the merchant ploughs the main,
The farmer ploughs the manor;
But glory is the soldier's pride,
The soldier's wealth is honor.
The brave, poor soldier ne'er despise,
Nor count him as a stranger;
Remember he's his country's stay
In day and hour of danger!