There is another thing which girls and their mothers do not seem to consider.  The present mode of dress renders waltzing almost as objectionable in a large room as the boldest feats of a French ballet-dancer.  Not to put too fine a point on it, I mean that these girls’ gyrations in the centre of their gyrating and centrifugal hoops make a most operatic drapery-display.  I saw scores and scores of public waltzing-girls last summer, and among them all I saw but one who understood the art, or, at any rate, who practised the art, of avoiding an indecent exposure.  In the glare and glamour of gas-light it is only flash and clouds and indistinctness.  In the broad and honest daylight, it is not.  Do I shock ears polite?  I trust so.  If the saying of shocking things might prevent the doing of shocking things, I should be well content.  And is it an unpardonable sin for me to sit alone in my own room and write about what you go into a great hall, before hundreds of strange men and women, and do?

I do not speak thus about waltzing because I like to say it; but ye have compelled me.  If one member suffers, all the members suffer with it.  I respect and revere woman, and I cannot see her destroying or debasing the impalpable fragrance and delicacy of her nature without feeling the shame and shudder in my own heart.  Great is my boldness of speech towards you, because great is my glorying of you.  Though I speak as a fool, yet as a fool receive me.  My opinions may be rustic.  They are at least honest; and may it not be that the first fresh impressions of an unprejudiced and uninfluenced observer are as likely to be natural and correct views as those which are the result of many afterthoughts, long use, and an experience of multifold fascinations, combined with the original producing cause?  My opinions may be wrong, but they will do no harm; the penalty will rest alone on me:  while, if they are right, they may serve as a nail or two to be fastened by the masters of assemblies.

The funny part of Class-Day comes last,—­not so very funny to tell, but amazingly funny to see,—­only a wreath of bouquets fastened around the trunk of an old tree, perhaps eight or ten feet from the ground, and then the four classes range themselves around it in four circles with their hands fast locked together, the Freshman Class on the outside, the Senior Class within, grotesquely tricked out in vile old coats and “shocking bad hats.”  Then the two alternate classes go one way around the tree and the two others the opposite, pell-mell, harum-scarum, pushing and pulling, down and up again, only keeping fast hold of hands, singing, shouting, cheering ad libitum, ad throatum, (theirs,) ad earsum, (ours,) and going all the time in that din and yell and crowd and crash dear to the hearts of boys.  At a given signal there is a pause, and the Senior Class make sudden charge upon the bouquets, huddling and hustling and crowding and jumping at the foot of