A nobleman from Florence recently said to me: 

“At home, when we go to other people’s houses it is for the purpose of meeting our own friends or our friend’s friends.  We go after our evening meal and stay as long as we choose.  Some light refreshment is served, and those who wish to do so smoke or play cards.  The old and the young mingle together.  It is proper for each guest to make himself agreeable to all the others.  We do not desire to spend money or to make a fete.  At the proper times we have our balls and festas.

“But here in New York each night I have been pressed to go to a grand entertainment and eat a huge dinner cooked by a French chef and served by several men servants, where I am given one lady to talk to for several hours.  I must converse with no one else, even if there is a witty, beautiful and charming woman directly opposite me; and as I talk and listen I must consume some ten or twelve courses or fail to do justice to my host’s hospitality.  I am given four or five costly wines, caviar, turtle soup, fish, mousse, a roast, partridge, pate de fois gras, glaces, fruits, bonbons, and cigars costing two francs each.  Not to eat and drink would be to insult the friend who is paying at least forty or fifty francs for my dinner.  But I cannot enjoy a meal eaten in such haste and I cannot enjoy talking to one strange lady for so long.

“Then the men retire to a chamber from which the ladies are excluded.  I must talk to some man.  Perhaps I have seen an attractive woman I wish to meet.  It is hopeless.  I must talk to her husband!  At the end of three-quarters of an hour the men march to the drawing room, and again I talk to some one lady for half an hour and then must go home!  It may be only half-past ten o’clock, but I have no choice.  Away I must go.  I say good-night.  I have eaten a huge dinner; I have talked to one man and three ladies; I have drunk a great deal of wine and my head is very tired.

“Nineteen other people have had the same experience, and it has cost my host from five hundred to a thousand francs—­or, as you say here, from one hundred to two hundred dollars.  And why has he spent this sum of money?  Pardon me, my friend, if I say that it could be disbursed to much better advantage.  Should my host come to Florence I should not dare to ask him to dinner, for we cannot afford to have these elaborate functions.  If he came to my house he would have to dine en famille.  Here you feast every night in the winter.  Why?  Every day is not a feast day!”

I devote space and time to this subject commensurate with what seems to me to be its importance.  Dining out is the metropolitan form of social entertainment for the well-to-do.  I go to such affairs at least one hundred nights each year.  That is a large proportion of my whole life and at least one-half of all the time at my disposal for recreation.  So far as I can see, it is totally useless and a severe drain on one’s nervous centers.  It has sapped and is sapping my vitality.  During the winter I am constantly tired.  My head aches a large part of the time.  I can do only a half—­and on some days only a third—­as much work as I could at thirty-five.