All noiselessly these skeletons
    Stood leaning o'er the side,
Watching the flames around their heads
    That slowly by did glide;
Watching the phosphorescent glare
    That slowly by did glide.

And ever mounting in the air,
    The ghostly ship did rise;
And the helmsman saw the wondrous thing
    Climbing the leaden skies,
Saw the dull glare in the midnight air
    Of those phosphorescent eyes.

Higher and higher the blue flames flew,
    Upwards the phantoms spread,
Until they mingled with the stars
    That shone above their head;
But the helmsman saw not, for his eyes
    Were fixed, and he was—dead!

Then thrilled around an awful sound,
    A fierce, unearthly cry;
It thrill'd around with an hideous sound,
    And awoke the companie.
They leapt from their trance, and threw a glance
    At the pallid heavens on high.

The moon was waxing faint and pale,
    The East was growing bright,
And the rosy flush of morning's blush,
    Beam'd down its dewy light;
But the stricken form of the helmsman lay
    Dead to their wondering sight!

             COURT, BALL, POWDER, AND
                              EVENING.

LATELY, while looking in at the pretty, sweet-
smelling things in the window of Mr. Truefitt's
shop, my eye (which had for some time been
suggesting to my palate that a dish of shaving
lather was trifle, and some cakes of pink soap
were Neapolitan ice creams) fell upon the
following bill:

            HANOVER SQUARE ROOMS.
                         BRITISH
          HAIRDRESSERS' ACADEMY.
           (Here a list of the Presidents.)
The Committee beg to announce that they will hold
                  A GRAND SOIRÉE
                At the above Rooms,
On Tuesday, January 23rd, 1866, at Half-past
               Eight o'clock precisely,
      When the members of the Academy
WILL DRESS A LARGE NUMBER OF LADIES
                                    IN
Court, Ball, Powder, and Evening Head-dresses.
                         At Ten o'clock,
                      A GRAND BALL
Will take place, to commemorate the opening of the
       BRITISH HAIRDRESSERS' ACADEMY.

Was it a joke, one of those elaborate pieces
of facetiousness, which people with more money
than wit are, in these facetious days, too much
disposed to perpetrate? No! surely Mr. Truefitt
would not joke on so serious a subject. It
was not a joke. There, among shaving trifle
and the abluent ice creams, lay several packets of
tickets, reserved and unreserved, double and
single, duly marked with the prices, which
were: gentleman's five shillings, lady's three
and sixpence, admitting to ball and soirée, and
including refreshments and supper. Thinking
that I had never known so much entertainment
both for the mind and the body, offered at so
low a charge, I entered the shop and bought a
ticket, making at the same time this memorandum
in my diary: "23rd January, engaged for
the grand soirée and ball of the British
Hairdressers' Academy."

At the appointed time I presented myself and
my ticket at the Hanover Square Rooms, and
passing through a throng of the Academicians
and their wives and daughters, all in evening
dress, I entered the grand salon. I
had seen some odd sights in the Rooms of
Hanover-square. The last time I had visited
them, the apartment was occupied by a "structure"
in which two mountebanks bound and
unbound themselves with cords, thrummed
nigger tunes on banjo and tambourine, and
called their absurd performance a manifestation
of the spirits. The structure was a strange thing
enough; but the sight which now presented
itself was stranger still. The centre of the large
room was occupied by a long row of tables
spread with a white cloth, as if for dinner;
only instead of plates, the festive board was set
out with oval hand-glasses. The knives and
forks were hair-pins.

If, not knowing what was about to take place,
you had been asked to guess the nature of the
entertainment, you would probably have guessed
a Feast of Winkles. When, presently, the
Academicians trooped into the room in a
procession, each one having on his arm a young
lady with dishevelled hair, your thoughts would
probably have wandered from winkles to the
wild suspicion that there was going to be a
wholesale execution of maids, unjustly doomed
through the larcenous propensities of magpies.
Or was it to be a competition in madness for the
appointment of an efficient Ophelia to a Temple
of the Drama?

The Academicians hand the dishevelled ladies
to their seats, each Academician standing
respectfully behind his particular lady's chair.
There is a short pause, as if for grace; but the
signal that is waited for is a wave of the chairman's
bâton, which is a comb. When you
more than half expect that each waiter will
hand his lady a plate of soup, each waiter, as if
he had purposely arranged to beguile and astonish
you, seizes his lady by the back hair. The
simultaneous seizing of forty beautiful females
(in white frocks, with their back hair down—
consequently in distress) by the back hair is
almost too much for your chivalrous feelings,
and you can scarcely resist the impulse to rush
upon the scene, hitch up your trousers, draw
your cutlass, and bid the land sharks avast!
But the next moment you perceive that it is
only "in the way of kindness" that hands are
laid upon the back hair of the lovely females;