aily afternoon tea ordeal of his early nursery days,
than a voluntary act of pleasure. He was long ago one of the first to
rebel against old Mrs. Toplofty's exactions of party calls, by saying he
did not care in the least whether his great-aunt Jane Toplofty invited him
to her stodgy old ball or not. And then Lucy Wellborn (the present Mrs.
Bobo Gilding) did not care much to go either if none of her particular men
friends were to be there. Little she cared to dance the cotillion with old
Colonel Bluffington or to go to supper with that odious Hector Newman.

And so, beginning first with a few gilded youths, then including young
society, the habit has spread until the obligatory paying of visits by
young girls and men has almost joined the once universal "day at home" as
belonging to a past age. Do not understand by this that visits are never
paid on other occasions. Visits to strangers, visits of condolence, and of
other courtesies are still paid, quite as punctiliously as ever. But
within the walls of society itself, the visit of formality is decreasing.
One might almost say that in certain cities society has become a family
affair. Its walls are as high as ever, higher perhaps to outsiders, but
among its own members, such customs as keeping visiting lists and having
days at home, or even knowing who owes a visit to whom, is not only
unobserved but is unheard of.

But because punctilious card-leaving, visiting, and "days at home" have
gone out of fashion in New York, is no reason why these really important
observances should not be, or are not, in the height of fashion elsewhere.
Nor, on the other hand, must anyone suppose because the younger
fashionables in New York pay few visits and never have days at home, that
they are a bit less careful about the things which they happen to consider
essential to good-breeding.

The best type of young men pay few, if any, party calls, because they work
and they exercise, and whatever time is left over, if any, is spent in
their club or at the house of a young woman, not tete-a-tete, but
invariably playing bridge. The Sunday afternoon visits that the youth of
another generation used always to pay, are unknown in this, because every
man who can, spends the week-end in the country.

It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that not alone men, but many young
married women of highest social position, except to send with flowers or
wedding presents, do not use a dozen visiting cards a ye