Go now and dress for some half-past eight dinner, or some ten o’clock “at home;” and present yourself in spotless attire, with every hair arranged to perfection.  How great the difference!  The enjoyment seems in the inverse ratio of the preparation.  These figures, got up with such finish and precision, appear but half alive.  They have frozen each other by their primness; and your faculties feel the numbing effects of the atmosphere the moment you enter it.  All those thoughts, so nimble and so apt awhile since, have disappeared—­have suddenly acquired a preternatural power of eluding you.  If you venture a remark to your neighbour, there comes a trite rejoinder, and there it ends.  No subject you can hit upon outlives half a dozen sentences.  Nothing that is said excites any real interest in you; and you feel that all you say is listened to with apathy.  By some strange magic, things that usually give pleasure seem to have lost all charm.

You have a taste for art.  Weary of frivolous talk, you turn to the table, and find that the book of engravings and the portfolio of photographs are as flat as the conversation.  You are fond of music.  Yet the singing, good as it is, you hear with utter indifference; and say “Thank you” with a sense of being a profound hypocrite.  Wholly at ease though you could be, for your own part, you find that your sympathies will not let you.  You see young gentlemen feeling whether their ties are properly adjusted, looking vacantly round, and considering what they shall do next.  You see ladies sitting disconsolately, waiting for some one to speak to them, and wishing they had the wherewith to occupy their fingers.  You see the hostess standing about the doorway, keeping a factitious smile on her face, and racking her brain to find the requisite nothings with which to greet her guests as they enter.  You see numberless traits of weariness and embarrassment; and, if you have any fellow-feeling, these cannot fail to produce a feeling of discomfort.  The disorder is catching; and do what you will you cannot resist the general infection.  You struggle against it; you make spasmodic efforts to be lively; but none of your sallies or your good stories do more than raise a simper or a forced laugh:  intellect and feeling are alike asphyxiated.  And when, at length, yielding to your disgust, you rush away, how great is the relief when you get into the fresh air, and see the stars!  How you “Thank God, that’s over!” and half resolve to avoid all such boredom for the future!

What, now, is the secret of this perpetual miscarriage and disappointment?  Does not the fault lie with all these needless adjuncts—­these elaborate dressings, these set forms, these expensive preparations, these many devices and arrangements that imply trouble and raise expectation?  Who that has lived thirty years in the world has not discovered that Pleasure is coy; and must not be too directly pursued, but must be caught unawares?  An air from a street-piano,