keen delight that such a big and
splendid life (there are orchids in the center of the table, there are
pearls and diamonds everywhere)--that such a life as this is yours to
grasp and to enjoy.

At Lucy's dinners the women do not wear diamonds and pearls. Lucy seldom
entertains more than six at a time. "Shall we go out?" she says when her
Delia mumbles something from the door. You straggle across the hall into
the dining-room, where thirteen carnations--you count them later,
there's time enough--where thirteen stiff carnations are doing duty in
the center of the prim table. At each place there is a soup plate
sending forth a cloud of steam. You wait until Lucy points out your
place to you, and then sit down at last. There is a terrible pause--you
wonder if they say grace--and then finally Lucy picks up her soup-spoon
for signal and you're off! The conversation is general. That is because
Lucy's guests are usually intellectuals, and whatever any one of them
says is supposed to be so important that every one else must keep still
and listen. You can't help but notice the food, because there's nothing
to soften the effect of it upon your nerves, as it were. There are
usually four courses, with chicken or ducks for the main dish,
accompanied by potatoes cut in balls, the invariable rubber stamp of a
party at Lucy's. Afterward there's coffee in the living-room, and you
feel fearfully discouraged when you look at the clock and find it's only
eight-thirty. You're surprised after the guests have gone to find that
Lucy considers her party a success.

"Why," she exclaims, cheeks aglow, "Dr. Van Breeze gave us the entire
resume of his new book. He seldom thinks anybody clever enough to talk
to. It was a perfect combination!"

As I said, I usually visit Lucy in rather a critical state of mind and
hold myself aloof from her learned old doctors and professors. On this
visit, though, she is so obviously careful of me and my feelings, that I
find myself going out of my way to consider hers a little. One day last
week when she so brightly suggested that we go to a tea given by the
wife of a member of the faculty, instead of exclaiming, "Oh, dear! it
would bore me to extinction," I replied sweetly, "All right, if you want
to, I'll go."

I wasn't feeling happy. I didn't want to go. I had been roaming the
woods and country roads round about for a month in search of an excuse
for existence. I had been autobiographing for days in the fai