Since my first experience in house parties I have yielded weakly to my
wife's importunities on several hundred similar occasions. Some of these
visits have been fairly enjoyable. Sleep is sometimes possible. Servants
are not always neglectful. Discretion in the matter of food and drink is
conceivable, even if not probable, and occasionally one meets congenial
persons.

As a rule, however, all the hypocrisies of society are intensified
threefold when heterogeneous people are thrown into the enforced contact
of a Sunday together in the country; but the artificiality and
insincerity of smart society is far less offensive than the
pretentiousness of mere wealth.

* * * * *

Not long ago I attended a dinner given on Fifth Avenue the invitation to
which had been eagerly awaited by my wife. We were asked to dine
informally with a middle-aged couple who for no obvious reason have been
accepted as fashionable desirables. He is the retired head of a great
combination of capital usually described as a trust. A canopy and a
carpet covered the sidewalk outside the house. Two flunkies in cockaded
hats stood beside the door, and in the hall was a line of six liveried
lackeys. Three maids helped my wife remove her wraps and adjust her
hair.

In the salon where our hostess received us were hung pictures
representing an outlay of nearly two million dollars--part of a
collection the balance of which they keep in their house in Paris; for
these people are not content with one mansion on Fifth Avenue and a
country house on Long Island, but own a palace overlooking the Bois de