without any effort of the brain, and--"

"I have no time for idle discussions of a mere literary nature," our
other self returned. "I am very full of the subject which I have sprung
upon you, and which I see you are trying to shirk."

"Not at all," we smilingly retorted. "We will answer you according to
your folly without the least reluctance. We are not in smart or swell
society because we cannot get in; but at the same time we would not get
in if we could, because we despise it too much. We wonder," we
continued, speculatively, "why we always suspect the society satirist of
suffering from a social snub? It doesn't in the least follow. Was Pope,
when he invited his S'in' John to

'leave all meaner things
To low ambition and the pride of kings'

goaded to magnanimity by a slight from royalty? Was Mr. Benson when he
came over here from London excluded from the shining first circles of
New York and Newport, which are apparently reflected with such brilliant
fidelity in _The Relentless City_, and was he wreaking an unworthy
resentment in portraying our richly moneyed, blue-blooded society to the
life? How are manners ever to be corrected with a smile if the smile is
always suspected of being an agonized grin, the contortion of the
features by the throes of a mortified spirit? Was George William Curtis
in his amusing but unsparing _Potiphar Papers_--"

"Ah, now you are shouting!" our other self exclaimed.

"Your slang is rather antiquated," we returned, with grave severity.
"But just what do you mean by it in this instance?"

"I mean that manners are never corrected with a smile, whether of
compassion or of derision. The manners that are bad, that are silly,
that are vulgar, that are vicious, go on unchastened from generation to
generation. Even the good manners don't seem to decay: simplicity,
sincerity, kindness, don't really go out, any more than the other
things, and fortunately the other things are confined only to a small
group in every civilization, to the black sheep of the great,
whity-brown or golden-fleeced human family."

"What has all this vague optimism to do with the _Potiphar Papers_ and
smart society and George William Curtis?" we brought the intruder
sharply to book.

"A great deal, especially the part relating to the continuity of bad
manners. I've just been reading an extremely clever little book by a new
writer, called _New York Society on Parade_, which so far as its