ng the fine flesh-tones and gay dressing of the
coloured brother at their elbow.

The most conventional society of America is apt to be more or less
shrouded by the pall of monotony that attends convention elsewhere,
but typical American society--the society of the great mass of
Americans--shows distinctly more variety than that of England. In
social meetings, as in business, the American is ever on the alert for
some new thing: and the brain of every pretty girl is cudgelled in
order to provide some novelty for her next party. Hence the
progressive euchre, the "library" parties, the "shadow" dances, the
conversation parties, and the long series of ingenious games, the
adoption of which, for some of us at least, has done much to lighten
the deadly dulness of English "small and earlies." Even the
sacro-sanctity of whist has not been respected, and the astonished
shade of Hoyle has to look on at his favourite game in the form of
"drive" and "duplicate." The way in which whist has been taken up in
the United States is a good example of the national unwillingness to
remain in the ruts of one's ancestors. Possibly the best club-players
of England are at least as good as the best Americans, but the general
average of play and the general interest in the game are distinctly
higher in the United States. Every English whist-player with any
pretension to science knows what he has to expect when he finds an
unknown lady as his partner, especially if she is below thirty; but in
America he will often find himself "put to his trumps" by a bright
girl in her teens. The girls in Boston and other large cities have
organised afternoon whist-clubs, at which all the "rigour of the game"
is observed. Many of them take regular lessons from whist experts; and
among the latter themselves are not a few ladies, who find the
teaching of their favourite game a more lucrative employment than
governessing or journalism. Even so small a matter as the eating of
ice-cream may illustrate the progressive nature of American society.
Elderly Americans still remember the time when it was usual to eat
this refreshing delicacy out of economical wine-glasses such as we
have still to be content with in England. But now-a-days no American
expects or receives less than a heaping saucer of ice-cream at a time.

Americans are born dancers; they have far more quicksilver in their
feet than their English cousins. Perhaps the very best waltzers I have
ever danced wi