o their good table, it is apt to fare ill with our friend.

So far, I have spoken of this class in the masculine, which is an error,
as the art is successfully practised by the weaker sex, with this shade
of difference. As an unmarried woman is in less general demand, she is
apt to attach herself to one dear friend, always sure to be a lady in
possession of fine country and city houses and other appurtenances of
wealth, often of inferior social standing; so that there is give and
take, the guest rendering real service to an ambitious hostess. The
feminine aspirant need not be handsome. On the contrary, an agreeable
plainness is much more acceptable, serving as a foil. But she must be
excellent in all games, from golf to piquet, and willing to play as often
and as long as required. She must also cheerfully go in to dinner with
the blue ribbon bore of the evening, only asked on account of his pretty
wife (by the bye, why is it that Beauty is so often flanked by the
Beast?), and sit between him and the "second prize" bore. These two
worthies would have been the portion of the hostess fifteen years ago;
she would have considered it her duty to absorb them and prevent her
other guests suffering. _Mais nous avons change tout cela_. The lady of
the house now thinks first of amusing herself, and arranges to sit
between two favorites.

Society has become much simpler, and especially less expensive, for
unmarried men than it used to be. Even if a hostess asks a favor in
return for weeks of hospitality, the sacrifice she requires of a man is
rarely greater than a cotillion with an unattractive debutante whom she
is trying to launch; or the sitting through a particularly dull opera in
order to see her to the carriage, her lord and master having slipped off
early to his club and a quiet game of pool. Many people who read these
lines are old enough to remember that prehistoric period when unmarried
girls went to the theatre and parties, alone with the men they knew. This
custom still prevails in our irrepressible West. It was an arrangement
by which all the expenses fell on the man--theatre tickets, carriages if
it rained, and often a bit of supper after. If a youth asked a girl to
dance the cotillion, he was expected to send a bouquet, sure to cost
between twenty and twenty-five dollars. What a blessed change for the
impecunious swell when all this went out of fashion! New York is his
paradise now; in other parts of t