Jute.—A quiet feeling, with small Sales.
Lady Henrietta Shimmers' long-talked-of Dance came off yesterday evening, at her recherché little mansion in North-west Bayswater, and was a great success. A handsome second-hand slip of Dutch carpet was laid down on the pavement outside the Hall-door, and from an early hour in the afternoon afforded a theme for much favourable comment in the immediate neighbourhood. The staircase had been, with the aid of half-a-dozen night-lights and a profusion of homemade paper flowers, turned into a perfect fairyland, the illusion becoming the more perfect the further the spectator receded. The one purple and green Hungarian, who attended with his trombone to represent that celebrated band of musicians, supplied the dance music with much spirit, while those noted viveurs, capable of expressing an opinion on the subject of supper, declare that the South-American tinned oysters, and the seventeen-shilling Roumanian champagne, with which they washed them down, were both, in their way, respectively, in the shape of refreshment, quite the most remarkable things they had met with anywhere this season. The company was select and distinguished. Mrs. Jippling, who brought her two chubby-faced, pretty daughters, both in ditch-water-coloured cotton, was a simple blaze of Birmingham paste and green-glass emeralds, and with her pompadour of yellow satin bed curtain, trimmed with chiffons of scarlet bell-ropes, looped up tastefully with bunches of cordons d'onions d'Espagne à la blanchisseuse, was the centre of pleasurable astonishment wherever she went. Lady Pickover also created quite a sensation, being a perfect dream in orange worsted. Miss Mugallow attracted a good deal of notice, wearing the celebrated heavily enamelled plated family Holly-hocks, and several débutantes in bright arsenical Emerald Green, who had not much to recommend them in the way of good looks, came in for a fair amount of cynically disagreeable comment. The dance terminated at an early hour in the morning, it being eventually brought to a conclusion by a little riot in the hall, caused by the linkman (who, owing to his potations, had not been very steady after midnight) endeavouring to make off with the hat-and-umbrella-stand, a feat which brought the police on to the premises with a suggestion, that "as things seemed getting a bit lively inside, perhaps the concern had better come to a finish." The proceedings shortly after this, were brought to an abrupt conclusion.
Two young men of aristocratic appearance, and otherwise faultless dress, were observed in the Park on Monday, in boots of ordinary leather. This breach of the convenances has excited much comment in the fashionable world to which they belong.
A curious sight was yesterday witnessed in Piccadilly. A gentleman well known in Society and in Politics lost his hat, which was run over, but not otherwise damaged, by a passing omnibus. The Honourable Gentleman's exclamation has been the subject of considerable remark in the Lobby of the House.
A careful investigator has been occupied in calculating the amount of roof accommodation available for the cats of the Metropolis. Dividing London according to Parliamentary districts, and subdividing these parochially and by streets (due allowance being, of course, made for wear and tear and removals), he has reached the remarkable conclusion, that every cat can command exactly one two-hundredth part of a roof. In this calculation kittens have been neglected.