through some commonplace phrases,
discovering the while that your new acquaintance is no more anxious to
know you, than you are to meet him; that he has not the slightest idea
who you are, neither does he desire to find out. He classes you with the
bore, and his one idea, like your own, is to escape. So that the only
result of the Introducer's good-natured interference has been to make two
fellow-creatures miserable.

A friend was telling me the other day of the martyrdom he had suffered
from this class. He spoke with much feeling, as he is the soul of
amiability, but somewhat short-sighted and afflicted with a hopelessly
bad memory for faces. For the last few years, he has been in the habit
of spending one or two of the winter months in Washington, where his
friends put him up at one club or another. Each winter on his first
appearance at one of these clubs, some kindly disposed old fogy is sure
to present him to a circle of the members, and he finds himself
indiscriminately shaking hands with Judges and Colonels. As little or no
conversation follows these introductions to fix the individuality of the
members in his mind, he unconsciously cuts two-thirds of his newly
acquired circle the next afternoon, and the following winter, after a ten-
months' absence, he innocently ignores the other third. So hopelessly
has he offended in this way, that last season, on being presented to a
club member, the latter peevishly blurted out:

"This is the fourth time I have been introduced to Mr. Blank, but he
never remembers me," and glared coldly at him, laying it all down to my
friend's snobbishness and to the airs of a New Yorker when away from
home. If instead of being sacrificed to the introducer's mistaken zeal
my poor friend had been left quietly to himself, he would in good time
have met the people congenial to him and avoided giving offence to a
number of kindly gentlemen.

This introducing mania takes an even more aggressive form in the hostess,
who imagines that she is lacking in hospitality if any two people in her
drawing-room are not made known to each other. No matter how interested
you may be in a chat with a friend, you will see her bearing down upon
you, bringing in tow the one human being you have carefully avoided for
years. Escape seems impossible, but as a forlorn hope you fling yourself
into conversation with your nearest neighbor, trying by your absorbed
manner to ward off the calamity. In vain! W