The Heart-Fiend Finds an Echo from the Fiend Without

Three rooms were thrown open to the company. We had refreshments
in abundance and great variety, and at a certain hour, we were
astounded by the clamor of tamborine and fiddle giving due notice
to the dancers. Among my few social accomplishments, this of
dancing had never been included. Naturally, I should, perhaps, be
considered an awkward man. I was conscious of this awkwardness at
all times when not excited by action or some earnest motive. I was
incapable of that graceful loitering, that flexibleness of mind
and body, which excludes the idea of intensity, of every sort,
and which constitutes one of the great essentials for success in
a ball-room. It was in this very respect that my FRIEND, William
Edgerton, may be said to have excelled most young men of our acquaintance.
He was what, in common speech, is called an accomplished man. Of
very graceful person, without much earnestness of character, he
had acquired a certain fastidiousness of taste on the subjects of
costume and manners, which, without Brummellizing, he yet carried
to an extent which betrayed a considerable degree of mental feebleness.
This somewhat assimilated him to the fashionable dandy. He walked
with an air equally graceful, noble, and unaffected. He was never
on stilts, yet he was always EN REGLE. He had as little maurias,
honte as maurais ton. In short, whatever might have been his
deficiencies, he was confessedly a very neat specimen of the fine
gentleman in its most commendable social sense.

William Edgerton was among the guests of Mrs. Clifford. There
had been no previous intimacy between the Edgerton and Clifford
families, yet he had been specially invited. Mrs. C. could have
had but a single motive for inviting him--so I thought--that of
making her evening a jam. She had just that ambition of the lady
of small fashion, who regards the number rather than the quality of
her guests, and would prefer a saloon full of Esquimaux or Kanzas,
and would partake of their sea-blubber, rather than lose the triumph
of making more noise than her rival neighbors, the Sprigginses or
Wigginses.