DUNEDIN.

Clutha Leader, Volume III, Issue 156, 6 July 1877, Page 6

DUNEDIN.

[FROM AN OCCASIONAL CORRESPONDENT.] A fancy ball. Yes, by the great horn spoon ! it's out * you've got it. May you be as blessed in the possession of it as your miserable correspondent has been made wretched over the thought of it; if it should so turn out, you will be a happy man, a very happy man indeed. Your correspondent was not at the ball. ■No, he was not, and perhaps that is the reason why he pours out into your sympathising ear, die full flood of his irrepressible grief. No, no, it was a *-' select " affair, and that is why he was not invited. Well, well, he consoled himself that selection has always reference to some standpoint from which the selection is made, and if footpads and publicans et hoc gemis may haven select, assembly, why,' a fortiori, may not a Football Club have one? Yes, by hokey, and they have had one, at which were present, it would seem, the sacred and profane, the learned if not the ignorant. Having seen the names of two learned judges, I was vexed at not finding the list perfected with the names of some learned divinity or medicine. With the exception of the solitary o-host of a monk of the middle ages, representatives of divinity or medicine there was none, but then the affair was select — very. Mr Editor, how much further do you think it is possible for the force of folly to carry hapless humanity. You may be able to have some definite conception of this knotty point, I have none. There is perhaps a good deal of folly in an ordinary ball affair, and from a medical point of view it is seldom any good comes of it 7 tbe moral and social good I don't pretend to meddle With. Still, there 1 is, perhaps, 'a little totnibplery Avith ordinary balls, as the excitement' therewith demands, but lackJ> l ~^ a 3 r j tliis fancy: balhbusiness is torn-: . distilled.;- f "There? does;

not seem to be about it a single trait, rha. might even help to redeem it from the ohm-go of folly.' Tn a masked ball there is the excitement of guessing who this, that, and the. other may be* the risk also of being in very bad, as well as in good company, and although this is a poor return, still it is something. But fancy a well-known somebody stalking in as cook or housemaid, or Merry- Andrew, or as in one case I knew of, the Queen ot England. After all it may be a good place to study idiosyncracies. We see what the mind of Air and Mrs So-and-so dwells upon, and would fain realise. We see 'he outcome of the novel which has taken deepest hold of the thing that Miss So-and-So calls her mind. But to return to the case before us, there was a French clown present, No donbt this was in bitter mockery of'the whole proceedings, as it appeared to be the character truly in keeping- with the occasion. Silly men and sillier women appeared to be there endeavouring to realise in a grotesque form, and for a moment, the deepest aspirations of their nature, and what a depth—shall we say of vanity — was there ! It is really to be hoped that we shall have no more of any such exhibitions as these, for whether viewed as an intellectual, social, or symbolic entertainment, they are sheer trifling, and however select they reflect small credit on the taste or discernment of those who are in any way connected with them.