Lunch came at two o’clock, bursting like a thunder-storm out of a sunlit sky.  Afterward the guests sat round and talked.  People were coming to tea at five, and there was hardly any use in doing anything before that time.  A few took naps.  A young lady and gentleman played an impersonal game of tennis; but at five an avalanche of social leaders poured out of a dozen shrieking motors and stormed the castle with salvos of strident laughter.  The cannonade continued, with one brief truce in which to dress for dinner, until long after midnight. Vox, et praeterea nihil!

I look back on that house party with vivid horror.  Yet it was one of the most valuable of my social experiences.  We were guests invited for the first time to one of the smartest houses on Long Island; yet we were neglected by male and female servants alike, deprived of all possibility of sleep, and not the slightest effort was made to look after our personal comfort and enjoyment by either our host or hostess.  Incidentally on my departure I distributed about forty dollars among various dignitaries who then made their appearance.

It is probable that time has somewhat exaggerated my recollections of the miseries of this our first adventure into ultrasmart society, but its salient characteristics have since repeated themselves in countless others.  I no longer accept week-end invitations;—­for me the quiet of my library or the Turkish bath at my club; for they are all essentially alike.  Surrounded by luxury, the guests yet know no comfort!

After a couple of days of ennui and an equal number of sleepless nights, his brain foggy with innumerable drinks, his eyes dizzy with the pips of playing cards, and his ears still echoing with senseless hilarity, the guest rises while it is not yet dawn, and, fortified by a lukewarm cup of faint coffee boiled by the kitchen maid and a slice of leatherlike toast left over from Sunday’s breakfast, presses ten dollars on the butler and five on the chauffeur—­and boards the train for the city, nervous, disgruntled, his digestion upset and his head totally out of kilter for the day’s work.

Since my first experience in house parties I have yielded weakly to my wife’s importunities on several hundred similar occasions.  Some of these visits have been fairly enjoyable.  Sleep is sometimes possible.  Servants are not always neglectful.  Discretion in the matter of food and drink is conceivable, even if not probable, and occasionally one meets congenial persons.

As a rule, however, all the hypocrisies of society are intensified threefold when heterogeneous people are thrown into the enforced contact of a Sunday together in the country; but the artificiality and insincerity of smart society is far less offensive than the pretentiousness of mere wealth.

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