f me: I had never learned to care for books, I had no
resources outside of my profession, and when I was not working on some
legal problem I dawdled over the newspapers and went to bed. I don't
mean to imply that our existence, outside of our continued intimacy with
the Peterses and the Blackwoods, was socially isolated. We gave little
dinners that Maude carried out with skill and taste; but it was I
who suggested them; we went out to other dinners, sometimes to
Nancy's--though we saw less and less of her--sometimes to other houses.
But Maude had given evidence of domestic tastes and a disinclination for
gaiety that those who entertained more were not slow to sense. I should
have liked to take a larger house, but I felt the futility of suggesting
it; the children were still small, and she was occupied with them.
Meanwhile I beheld, and at times with considerable irritation, the
social world changing, growing larger and more significant, a more
important function of that higher phase of American existence the new
century seemed definitely to have initiated. A segregative process was
away to which Maude was wholly indifferent. Our city was throwing off
its social conservatism; wealth (which implied ability and superiority)
was playing a greater part, entertainments were more luxurious, lines
more strictly drawn. We had an elaborate country club for those who
could afford expensive amusements. Much of this transformation had been
due to the initiative and leadership of Nancy Durrett....

Great and sudden wealth, however, if combined with obscure antecedents
and questionable qualifications, was still looked upon askance. In spite
of the fact that Adolf Scherer had "put us on the map," the family of
the great iron-master still remained outside of the social pale.
He himself might have entered had it not been for his wife, who was
supposed to be "queer," who remained at home in her house opposite
Gallatin Park and made little German cakes,--a huge house which an
unknown architect had taken unusual pains to make pretentious and
hideous, for it was Rhenish, Moorish and Victorian by turns. Its
geometric grounds matched those of the park, itself a monument to
bad taste in landscape. The neighbourhood was highly respectable, and
inhabited by families of German extraction. There were two flaxen-haired
daughters who had just graduated from an expensive boarding-school in
New York, where they had received the polish needful for future