On the very last day, in the afternoon when my observances were most and noisiest, I lifted my eyes but once during the final half-hour--but such a one that was! The edge of that beautiful grey pongee skirt came upon the lid of my lowered eyelid like a cool shadow over hot sand.

A sergent had just made many of the people move away, so there remained only a thin ring of the laughing pantaloons about me, when this divine skirt presented its apparition to me.

A pair of North-American trousers accompanied it, turned up to show the ankle-bones of a rich pair of stockings; neat, enthusiastic and humorous, I judged them to be; for, as one may discover, my only amusement during my martyrdom--if this misery can be said to possess such alleviatings--had been the study of feet, pantaloons, and skirts.

The trousers in this case detained my observation no time.

They were but the darkest corner of the chiaroscuro of a Rembrandt--the mellow glow of gold was all across the grey skirt.
How shall I explain myself, how make myself understood?
Shall I be thought sentimentalistic or but mad when I declare that my first sight of the grey pongee skirt caused me a thrill of excitation, of tenderness, and--oh-i-me!--of self-consciousness more acute than all my former mortifications.