and her tone suggests that a social stigma rests
upon the Browns. I ask her if she has been to Barnum's Circus; she
hasn't, but is going. I give her my impressions of Barnum's Circus,
which are precisely the impressions of everybody else who has seen the
show.

"Or if luck be against me, she is possibly a smart woman, that is to
say, her conversation is a running fire of spiteful remarks at the
expense of every one she knows, and of sneers at the expense of every
one she doesn't. I always feel I could make a better woman myself, out
of a bottle of vinegar and a penn'orth of mixed pins. Yet it usually
takes one about ten minutes to get away from her.

"Even when, by chance, one meets a flesh-and-blood man or woman at such
gatherings, it is not the time or place for real conversation; and as
for the shadows, what person in their senses would exhaust a single
brain cell upon such? I remember a discussion once concerning Tennyson,
considered as a social item. The dullest and most densely-stupid bore I
ever came across was telling how he had sat next to Tennyson at dinner.
'I found him a most uninteresting man,' so he confided to us; 'he
had nothing to say for himself--absolutely nothing.' I should like to
resuscitate Dr. Samuel Johnson for an evening, and throw him into one of
these 'At Homes' of yours."

My friend is an admitted misanthrope, as I have explained; but one
cannot dismiss him as altogether unjust. That there is a certain mystery
about Society's craving for Society must be admitted. I stood one
evening trying to force my way into the supper room of a house in
Berkeley Square. A lady, hot and weary, a few yards in front of me was
struggling to the same goal.

"Why," remarked she to her companion, "why do we come to these places,
and fight like a Bank Holiday crowd for eighteenpenny-worth of food?"

"We come here," replied the man, whom I judged to be a philosopher, "to
say we've been here."

I met A----- the other evening, and asked him to dine with me on Monday.
I don't know why I ask A----- to dine with me, but about once a month I
do. He is an uninteresting man.

"I can't," he said, "I've got to go to the B-----s'; confounded
nuisance, it will be infernally dull."

"Why go?" I asked.

"I really don't know," he replied.

A little later B----- met me, and asked me to dine with him on Monday.

"I can't," I answered, "some friends are coming to us that evening. It's
a duty dinner, you know the sort