6d.
_To commence at Seven_.
N.B .-- _The performance will include a variety of new and surprising feats of Legerdemain never before exhibited_.
_A soiree fantastique_! what would I not give to be present at a _soiree fantastique_! I had read of the Rosicrucians, of Count Cagliostro, and of Doctor Dee.

I had peeped into more than one curious treatise on Demonology, and I fancied there could be nothing in the world half so marvellous as that last surviving branch of the Black Art entitled the Science of Legerdemain.
What if, for this once, I were to ask leave to be present at the performance?
Should I do so with even the remotest chance of success?
It was easier to propound this momentous question than to answer it.

My father, as I have already said, disapproved of public entertainments, and his prejudices were tolerably inveterate.

But then, what could be more genteel than the programme, or more select than the prices?
How different was an entertainment given in the large room of the Red Lion Hotel to a three-penny wax-work, or a strolling circus on Barnard's Green! I had made one of the audience in that very room over and over again when the Vicar read his celebrated "Discourses to Youth," or Dr.
Dunks came down from Grinstead to deliver an explosive lecture on chemistry; and I had always seen the reserved seats filled by the best families in the neighborhood.

Fully persuaded of the force of my own arguments, I made up my mind to prefer this tremendous request on the first favorable opportunity, and so hurried home, with my head full of quite other thoughts than usual.
My father was sitting at the table with a mountain of books and papers before him.