There were road-horses, coach-horses, saddle-horses and hunters, polo-ponies, stud-horses—­every kind of horse that is used for pleasure, over a hundred different “classes” of them.  They were put through their paces about the ring, and there was a committee which judged them, and awarded blue and red ribbons.  Apparently their highly artificial kind of excellence was a real thing to the people who took part in the show; for the spectators thrilled with excitement, and applauded the popular victors.  There was a whole set of conventions which were generally understood—­there was even a new language.  You were told that these “turnouts” were “nobby” and “natty”; they were “swagger” and “smart” and “swell.”

However, the horse was really a small part of this show; before one had sat out an afternoon he realized that the function was in reality a show of Society.  For six or seven hours during the day the broad promenade would be so packed with human beings that one moved about with difficulty; and this throng gazed towards the ring almost never—­it stared up into the boxes.  All the year round the discontented millions of the middle classes read of the doings of the “smart set”; and here they had a chance to come and see them-alive, and real, and dressed in their showiest costumes.  Here was all the grand monde, in numbered boxes, and with their names upon the programmes, so that one could get them straight.  Ten thousand people from other cities had come to New York on purpose to get a look.  Women who lived in boarding-houses and made their own clothes, had come to get hints; all the dressmakers in town were present for the same purpose..  Society reporters had come, with notebooks in hand; and next morning the imitators of Society all over the United States would read about it, in such fashion as this:  “Mrs. Chauncey Venable was becomingly gowned in mauve cloth, made with an Eton jacket trimmed with silk braid, and opening over a chemisette of lace.  Her hat was of the same colour, draped with a great quantity of mauve and orange tulle, and surmounted with birds of paradise to match.  Her furs were silver fox.”

The most intelligent of the great metropolitan dailies would print columns of this sort of material; and as for the “yellow” journals, they would have discussions of the costumes by “experts,” and half a page of pictures of the most conspicuous of the box-holders.  While Montague sat talking with Mrs. Walling, half a dozen cameras were snapped at them; and once a young man with a sketch-book placed himself in front of them and went placidly to work.—­Concerning such things the society dame had three different sets of emotions:  first, the one which she showed in public, that of bored and contemptuous indifference; second, the one which she expressed to her friends, that of outraged but helpless indignation; and third, the one which she really felt, that of triumphant exultation over her rivals, whose pictures were not published and whose costumes were not described.