"'Yes,' the caitiff murmurs. 'This is the annual fancy dress ball at Brookwood Asylum. You and I and the doctors and attendants are the only sane people in the place. By-and-by the country gentry will be admitted, and then the tangle will be hopeless, for even in everyday life it's impossible to know who's mad and who isn't. How much more here?'

      "We left the trembling caitiff to his secret sketching, and the despondency produced by his appearance. He was sane, was he? Then in him were we revenged on human nature, for sure never was mortal more oppressed by his gear and his surroundings."

      The fact is that my editor, in sending his "young man," omitted to say that the invitation was crossed with "fancy dress only," so I arrived in ordinary war-paint. The Doctor was horrified. "This will never do. My patients will resent it. You must be in fancy dress." All my host could find was a seedy red curtain and an old cocked hat (had it been a nightcap I should have been complete as Caudle). I wrapped this martial cloak around me, and soon found myself in the most extraordinary scene, so graphically described by Wingfield. He was not alone in his scorn for me. The "Duke of York" had a great contempt for my appearance, but when introduced to him as His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, he unbent, waved his bauble, and commanded me to be seated. The visitors eyed me suspiciously all the evening, and on my entering the supper-room, accompanied by the Doctor, they were seized with the idea that I must be a very dangerous case, and readily made room—in fact, made off. One of the poor patients was an artist, and showed me his sketch-book, the work of many, many months—a number of drawings in colour, stuck one on top of the other, resembling an elongated concertina, so that only the corners of the pages could be seen. The patients wore costumes designed and made by themselves, in marked contrast to their stylish keepers. Among the guests the county families were well represented, and garrison officers from a neighbouring depôt formed a motley group which a looker-on, viewing the scene as in a kaleidoscope, would laugh at. One turn, and the next moment some incident might occur which an imaginative brain could easily work into a romance too touching to relate.

      For some years I had quite a run of fancy dress balls, a craze at that time, acting as special artist for various periodicals, the Illustrated London News in particular. The ball above recorded was unique, but there is very little variety in such gatherings, where variety is the one thing aimed at, thus showing the limit of our English artistic invention. The ingredients of a ball of three hundred, say, would be as follows—Thirty Marie Stuarts, ten Marguerites, twenty-eight Fausts, fifty Flower Girls, nine Portias, three Clowns, sixteen Matadores, thirty Sailors, twenty-five Ophelias, twenty-five Desdemonas, the remainder uniforms and nondescripts. Of course any popular figure, picture or play of the moment will be represented. When the relief of Mafeking took place, the number of Baden-Powells, tall, short, young, old, thin and stout, in the various fancy balls and bazaars appearing will be, as newspaper leader-writers say, "a fact fresh in the mind of the reader." Some years ago a portrait of the "missing Gainsborough," a picture of the Duchess of Devonshire, which mysteriously vanished from Agnew's gallery in Bond Street, was represented in dozens at the fancy balls of the period, and the Gilbert-Sullivan opera "Patience," supplied many a costume. My brother "special" on this occasion—Lewis Wingfield—was a Crichton of eccentricity. The son of an Irish peer, an officer in the Guards, he dressed as a ballet-girl and danced on the stage; was a journalist and wrote for Charles Dickens when that great novelist edited Household Words. Wingfield never did anything by halves, so in writing a series of articles for Dickens on the casual wards of London he personated a street photographer (having delicate hands he could not pretend to be a labourer), and wrote his experiences of the dreadful state of affairs existing in those days under the rule of Bumbledom. The last he sought relief at was situated close to Golden Square. Here he was very harshly treated, and when he left he rapidly changed into his usual clothes, drove up to the establishment as one of the life patrons (all his family had for years supported the charity), and had the satisfaction of dismissing the overbearing overseer, to the wretch's chagrin. Wingfield related this incident with great glee.