The charge of standardization will, however, bear a little thought.  It is true that most American cities have a general family resemblance—­that a business street in Atlanta or Memphis looks much like a business street in Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Buffalo, Milwaukee, St. Paul, Kansas City, or St. Louis—­and that much the same thing may be said of residence streets.  Houses and office buildings in one city are likely to resemble those of corresponding grade in another; the men who live in the houses and go daily to the offices are also similar; so are the trolley cars in which they journey to and fro; still more so the Fords which many of them use; the clothing of one man is like that of another, and all have similar conventions concerning the date at which—­without regard to temperature—­straw hats should be discarded.  Their womenfolk, also, are more or less alike, as are the department stores in which they shop and the dresses they buy.  And the same is true of their children, the costumes of those children, and the schools they attend.

Every American city has social groups corresponding to similar groups in other cities.  There is always the small, affluent group, made up of people who keep butlers and several automobiles, and who travel extensively.  In this group there are always some snobs:  ladies who give much time to societies founded on ancestry, and have a Junkerish feeling about “social leadership.”

Every city has also its “fast” group:  people who consider themselves “unconventional,” who drink more than is good for them, and make much noise.  Some members of this group may belong to the first group, as well, but in the fast group they have a following of well-dressed hangers-on:  unmarried men and women, youngish rather than young, who, with little money, yet manage to dress well and to be seen eating and drinking and dancing in public places.  There is usually to be found in this group a hectic widow or two—­be it grass or sod—­and a few pretty girls who, having been given too much freedom at eighteen, begin to wonder at twenty-eight, why, though they have always been “good fellows,” none of the dozens of men who take them about have married them.  To this aggregation drift also those restless husbands and wives whose glances rove hopefully away from their mates, a few well-bred drunkards, and a few men and women who are trying to forget things they cannot forget.

Then there is always the young married group—­a nice group for the most part—­living in comfortable new houses or apartments, and keeping, usually, both a small automobile and a baby carriage.  They also go to the Country Club on Saturday nights, leave their motors standing in the drive, eat a lukewarm supper that tastes like papier-mache, and dance themselves to wiltedness.

Another group is entirely masculine, being made up of husbands of various ages, their mutual bond being the downtown club to which they go daily, and in which the subjects discussed are politics, golf, and the evils of prohibition.  To this group always belong the black-sheep husbands who, after taking their wives to the Country Club, disappear and remain away until they are sent for because it is time to go home, when they come back shamefaced and scented with Scotch.