Press where ye see my white hat shine amidst the ranks of war,

seemed to be the sentiment of the occasion, as the unruly mob swayed and struggled about the dilapidated victim of their sport.  In one corner stood a quiet, dignified gentleman, talking sedately to a little knot of friends.  He wore a tall white “stove-pipe” of the most obnoxious kind.  In a twinkling it was seized and sent flying toward the roof with its softer predecessor.  Its owner gave one glance over his shoulder, and “smiled a sickly smile,” while it was very evident that

    The subsequent proceedings interested him no more.

The fun grew fast and furious, the air was literally darkened with flying hats of every shape and size, but all white.  The stout tall beavers were converted into footballs till their crowns were kicked out and their brims torn off, when they were seized upon as instruments for further torture.  Some innocent member of the large fraternity, now, to use a nautical phrase, scudding under bare polls, was pounced upon, and over his unfortunate head the crownless hat was drawn till the ragged remnant of its brim rested upon his shoulders.  One poor creature was thus bonneted with at least three tiers of hats, and was last seen on the edge of the cockpit struggling with imminent suffocation.

At the height of the howling, scuffling, kicking and fighting a short diversion was effected.  A tall and portly broker appeared upon the scene in an entire suit of new broadcloth.  It was unmistakably new, its brilliancy quite undimmed.  Instantly a rush was made for him by the fickle crowd.  They swept him, as by some mighty wave, into the centre of the room:  they turned him round and round like a pivoted statue, and examined him and patted him approvingly on every side.  Then they made a large ring round him and gave him three cheers.  Not content with this, with one sudden impulse they rushed at him again, and tried to lift him upon the table, that they might see him better.  But this the portly broker resisted:  he fought like a good fellow, and the crowd, tired of struggling with a man of so much weight, gave one final cheer and went back to the chase of the white hats.

We stayed about half an hour to watch these elegant and refined diversions:  at the end of that time our patience and the white hats were giving out together.  The din was deafening and the dust was rapidly rising.  The floor was strewn with scraps of papers and the mangled remains of felt and beaver.  Brimless hats and hatless brims, linings, bands, rent and tattered crowns, and ragged fragments of the fray, were all over the place.  A writhing victim in gray, masked by a crownless hat, was struggling upon the table to the evident danger of those unhappy flowers; the president was calling across the tumult in stentorian tones; but the tumult refused to fall, and the imperturbable pages were bawling upon the skirts of the crowd with stolid pertinacity.  The noise was terrific, the confusion indescribable.