ent concluded with a stereopticon exhibition of supposedly
humorous events, which obviously did not strike the children as funny at
all. Supper was laid in the dining room, where the table had been
arranged as if for a banquet of diplomats. There were flowers in
abundance and a life-size swan of icing at each end. Each child was
assisted by its own nurse, and our butler and a footman served, in
stolid dignity, a meal consisting of rice pudding, cereals, cocoa, bread
and butter, and ice-cream.

It was by all odds the most decorous affair ever held in our house. At
the end the gifts were distributed--Parisian dolls, toy baby-carriages
and paint boxes for the girls; steam engines, magic lanterns and
miniature circuses for the boys. My bill for these trifles came to one
hundred and twelve dollars. At half-past six the carriages arrived and
our guests were hurried away.

I instance this affair because it struck the note of elegant propriety
that has always been the tone of our family and social life. The
children invited to the party were the little boys and girls whose
fathers and mothers we thought most likely to advance their social
interests later on.

Of these children two of the girls have married members of the foreign
nobility--one a jaded English lord, the other a worthless and dissipated
French count; another married--fifteen years later--one of these same
little boys and divorced him within eighteen months; while two of the
girls--our own--have not married.

Of the boys one wedded an actress; another lives in Paris and studies
"art"; one has been already accounted for; and two have given their
lives to playing polo, the stock market, and elevating the chorus.

* * * * *

Beginning at this early period, my two daughters, and later on my son,
met only the most select young people of their own age in New York and
on Long Island. I remember being surprised at the amount of theatergoing
they did by the time the eldest was nine years old. My wife made a
practice of giving a children's theater party every Saturday and taking
her small guests to the matinee. As the theaters were more limited in
number then than now these comparative infants sooner or later saw
practically everything that was on the boards--good, bad and
indifferent; and they displayed a precocity of criticism that quite
astounded me.

Their real social career began with children's dinners and dancing
parties by the