more display and expense. I remember when
a private carriage in Washington was a rare object. The possession of
money didn't help one much socially. What made a person desired in any
company was the talent of being agreeable, talent of some sort, not the
ability to give a costly dinner or a big ball."

"But there are more literary and scientific people here, everybody
says," said Margaret, who was becoming a partisan of the city.

"Yes, and they keep more to themselves--withdraw into their studies, or
hive in their clubs. They tell me that the delightful informality
and freedom of the old life is gone. Ask the old Washington residents
whether the coming in of rich people with leisure hasn't demoralized
society, or stiffened it, and made it impossible after the old sort. It
is as easy here now as anywhere else to get together a very heavy dinner
party--all very grand, but it isn't amusing. It is more and more like
New York."

"But we have been to delightful dinners," Margaret insisted.

"No doubt. There are still houses of the old sort, where wit and
good-humor and free hospitality are more conspicuous than expense; but
when money selects, there is usually an incongruous lot about the board.
An oracular scientist at the club the other night put it rather neatly
when he said that a society that exists mainly to pay its debts gets
stupid."

"That's as clever," Margaret retorted, "as the remark of an
under-secretary at a cabinet reception the other night, that it is one
thing to entertain and another to be entertaining. I won't have you
slander Washington. I should like to spend all my winters here."

"Dear me!" said Morgan, "I've been praising Washington. I should like to
live here also, if I had the millions of Jerry Hollowell. Jerry is going
to build a palace out on the Massachusetts Avenue extension bigger than
the White House."

"I don't want to hear anything about Hollowell."

"But he is the coming man. He represents the democratic plutocracy that
we are coming to."

All Morgan's banter couldn't shake Margaret's enjoyment of the cheerful
city. "You like it as well as anybody," she told him. And in truth he
and Mrs. Morgan dipped into every gayety that was going. "Of course I
do," he said, "for a couple of weeks. I shouldn't like to be obliged
to follow it as a steady business. Washington is a good place to take a
plunge occasionally. And then you can go home and read King Solomon with
appreciation."

Mar