so busy coming-out and making a social success of myself
that it never occurred to me but that I was as important a member in
that household as Edith herself. I wasn't far from wrong either. When I
was a debutante and admired by Breckenridge Sewall, I was petted and
pampered and kept in sight. When I became a back-season number of some
four or five years' staleness, any old north room would do for me!

I used to dread Hilton in the winter, with nothing more exciting going
on than a few horrible thimble parties with girls who were beginning to
discuss how to keep thin, the importance of custom-made corsets, and
various other topics of advancing years. I soon acquired the habit of
interrupting these long seasons. I was frequently absent two months at a
time, visiting boarding-school friends, running out to California, up to
Alaska, or down to Mexico with some girl friend or other, with her
mother or aunt for a chaperon. Traveling is pleasant enough, but
everybody likes to feel a tie pulling gently at his heartstrings when he
steps up to a hotel register to write down the name of that little haven
that means home. It is like one of those toy return-balls. If the ball
is attached by an elastic string to some little girl's middle finger how
joyfully it springs forth from her hand, how eagerly returns again! When
suddenly on one of its trips the elastic snaps, the ball becomes
lifeless and rolls listlessly away in the gutter. When my home ties
broke, I, too, abandoned myself.

I had been on a visiting-trip made up of two-week stands in various
cities between Massachusetts and the Great Lakes, whither I had set out
to visit my oldest brother, Tom, and his wife, Elise, who live on the
edge of one of the Lakes in Wisconsin. I had been gone about six weeks
and had planned not to return to Hilton until the arrival of Hilton's
real society in May.

When I reached Henrietta Morgan's, just outside New York, on the return
trip, I fully expected to remain with her for two weeks and stop off
another week with the Harts in New Haven. But after about three days at
Henrietta's, I suddenly decided I couldn't stand it any longer. My
clothes all needed pressing--they had a peculiar trunky odor--even the
tissue paper which I used in such abundance in my old-fashioned tray
trunk had lost its life and crispness; I had gotten down to my last
clean pair of long white gloves; everything I owned needed some sort of
attention--I simply must go home