Of a certainty the comparison excepted the ladies of Government House, there being none who could compete with Mary Douglas, her beauty being of a superior type.
At the ball a married lady of rank wore diamonds valued at a cost seeming fabulous.

Others followed in the wake of such extravagance by wearing necklaces, bracelets, head-dresses, ear-rings, and brooches, in almost unlimited profusion.

Add to this the magnificent array of Sir Howard's supper table, its glittering plate in massive style, its enormous chandeliers, its countless train of liveried attendants, and you can then only form a very faint conception of the first ball given in the present Government House, nearly half a century in the past! Truly this was the chivalric age in the history of the capital of New Brunswick--the age when proud knighthood was the ruling passion in the breasts of the sterner sex, when true heroic bravery was the quality which won the maiden fair, when the breath of slander could not be tolerated without calling forth a brave champion on behalf of the wronged.

This is the age that has passed away never to return.

Progress and Reform are the two great powers combined to crush out all traces of those by-gone days.