langwidges,” rasping their throats into bronchitis in the bidding of the conversational ring.  If they spoke low, or even in the ordinary tone, conversation would be possible.  But then it would not be a reception, as we understand it.  We cannot neglect anywhere any of the pleasures of our social life.  We train for it in lower assemblies.  Half a dozen women in a “call” are obliged to shout, just for practice, so that they can be heard by everybody in the neighborhood except themselves.  Do not men do the same?  If they do, it only shows that men also are capable of the higher civilization.

But does society—­that is, the intercourse of congenial people—­depend upon the elaborate system of exchanging calls with hundreds of people who are not congenial?  Such thoughts will sometimes come by a winter fireside of rational-talking friends, or at a dinner-party not too large for talk without a telephone, or in the summer-time by the sea, or in the cottage in the hills, when the fever of social life has got down to a normal temperature.  We fancy that sometimes people will give way to a real enjoyment of life and that human intercourse will throw off this artificial and wearisome parade, and that if women look back with pride, as they may, upon their personal achievements and labors, they will also regard them with astonishment.  Women, we read every day, long for the rights and privileges of men, and the education and serious purpose in life of men.  And yet, such is the sweet self-sacrifice of their nature, they voluntarily take on burdens which men have never assumed, and which they would speedily cast off if they had.  What should we say of men if they consumed half their time in paying formal calls upon each other merely for the sake of paying calls, and were low-spirited if they did not receive as many cards as they had dealt out to society?  Have they not the time?  Have women more time? and if they have, why should they spend it in this Sisyphus task?  Would the social machine go to pieces—­the inquiry is made in good faith, and solely for information—­if they made rational business for themselves to be attended to, or even if they gave the time now given to calls they hate to reading and study, and to making their household civilizing centres of intercourse and enjoyment, and paid visits from some other motive than “clearing off their list”?  If all the artificial round of calls and cards should tumble down, what valuable thing would be lost out of anybody’s life?

The question is too vast for the Drawer, but as an experiment in sociology it would like to see the system in abeyance for one season.  If at the end of it there had not been just as much social enjoyment as before, and there were not fewer women than usual down with nervous prostration, it would agree to start at its own expense a new experiment, to wit, a kind of Social Clearing-House, in which all cards should be delivered and exchanged, and all social debts of this kind be balanced by experienced bookkeepers, so that the reputation of everybody for propriety and conventionality should be just as good as it is now.