played an
impersonal game of tennis; but at five an avalanche of social leaders
poured out of a dozen shrieking motors and stormed the castle with
salvos of strident laughter. The cannonade continued, with one brief
truce in which to dress for dinner, until long after midnight. _Vox, et
praeterea nihil!_

I look back on that house party with vivid horror. Yet it was one of the
most valuable of my social experiences. We were guests invited for the
first time to one of the smartest houses on Long Island; yet we were
neglected by male and female servants alike, deprived of all possibility
of sleep, and not the slightest effort was made to look after our
personal comfort and enjoyment by either our host or hostess.
Incidentally on my departure I distributed about forty dollars among
various dignitaries who then made their appearance.

It is probable that time has somewhat exaggerated my recollections of
the miseries of this our first adventure into ultrasmart society, but
its salient characteristics have since repeated themselves in countless
others. I no longer accept week-end invitations;--for me the quiet of my
library or the Turkish bath at my club; for they are all essentially
alike. Surrounded by luxury, the guests yet know no comfort!

After a couple of days of ennui and an equal number of sleepless nights,
his brain foggy with innumerable drinks, his eyes dizzy with the pips of
playing cards, and his ears still echoing with senseless hilarity, the
guest rises while it is not yet dawn, and, fortified by a lukewarm cup
of faint coffee boiled by the kitchen maid and a slice of leatherlike
toast left over from Sunday's breakfast, presses ten dollars on the
butler and five on the chauffeur--and boards the train for the city,
nervous, disgruntled, his digestion upset and his head totally out of
kilter for the day's work.

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 i