n
into a splendid whole--a composition rhetorical, humorous, lyrical,
a noble apotheosis of wealth and beauty which carefully satisfies
individual vanity and raises in the mind a noble picture of modern
civilization. The pen and the pencil contribute to this splendid result
in the daily chronicle of our life. Those who are not present are really
witnesses of the scene, and this pictorial and literary triumph is
justified in the fact that no other effort of the genius of reproduction
is so eagerly studied by the general public. Not only in the city, but
in the remote villages, these accounts are perused with interest, and it
must be taken as an evidence of the new conception of the duties of the
favored of fortune to the public pleasure that the participants in these
fetes overcome, though reluctantly, their objection to notoriety.

No other people in the world are so hospitable as the Americans, and so
willing to incur discomfort in showing hospitality. No greater proof of
this can be needed than the effort to give princely entertainments in
un-princely houses, where opposing streams of guests fight for progress
in scant passages and on narrow stairways, and pack themselves in
stifling rooms. The Mavick house, it should be said, was perfectly
adapted to the throng that seemed to fill but did not crowd it. The
spacious halls, the noble stairways, the ample drawing-rooms, the
ballroom, the music-room, the library, the picture-gallery, the
dining-room, the conservatory--into these the crowd flowed or lingered
without confusion or annoyance and in a continual pleasure of surprise.
"The best point of view," said an artist of Philip's acquaintance, "is
just here." They were standing in the great hall looking up at that
noble gallery from which flowed down on either hand a broad stairway.

"I didn't know there was so much beauty in New York. It never before had
such an opportunity to display itself. There is room for the exhibition
of the most elaborate toilets, and the costumes really look regal in
such a setting."

When Philip was shown to the dressing-room, conscious that the servant
was weighing him lightly in the social scale on account of his early
arrival, he found a few men who were waiting to make their appearance
more seasonable. They were young men, who had the air of being bored
by this sort of thing, and greeted each other with a look of courteous
surprise, as much as to say, "Hello! you here?" One of them, whom