ary ability was by no means the
first requisite for admission, and that the membership list might be
used with impunity for directing invitations to the smartest dances; but
despite these facts, there was a decidedly literary flavor about the
meetings of the club, enhanced perhaps by the presence of two or three
ladies who had actually experienced the delight of seeing their writings
in print. Of course the talking was confined to a confident set, who
enjoyed the excitement of a literary discussion; for as no one else
desired to undergo the tortures of speaking in public, the vast majority
assumed a dignified expression of wisdom, and remained discreetly
silent. The club had discussed Dante and Petrarch, Villani and Ariosto,
even Lorenzo de Medici; it had laughed over Cervantes and blushed
profusely over Boccaccio and Rabelais, but the meeting to which the
Sandersons and Florence Moreland had gone was called for no such
intellectual purpose. Once during the season the club gave a tea to
which men were invited, and on such occasions the entertainment was
confined to the efforts of elocutionists and balladists. Whether the
club dared not expose its intellectual attainments to public criticism,
or did not care to have its literary efforts judged by the standard of
the Board of Trade, was never sufficiently clear; but in spite of the
fact that no literature was ever discussed at the annual tea, this
meeting was invariably the most fully attended of any during the season.

When the Sanderson party entered there was such a hum of subdued voices,
that the efforts of a young woman engaged in singing were scarcely
audible above the animated whisperings of the people who thronged the
club-rooms. Numerous small tea tables supplied with all manner of dainty
tea things were scattered about. Each of these was presided over by a
pretty girl, and each was surrounded by a knot of black-coated youths.
Although young men were there in abundance, those of mature years were
conspicuously absent; but it is one of the peculiarities of a busy city
like Chicago, that while young employes are able to appear at afternoon
gatherings, the heads of firms are invariably detained at their
offices.

The balladist's song was followed by an uninterrupted flow of feminine
voices, punctuated with occasional masculine laughs, coming like
intermittent grumblings of thunder during a pattering storm of rain. The
American girl who does not talk is a rarity, in