u
observe, and Bobby Winslow, ne'er-do-weel, who is engaged in
subverting discipline at medical school, and who dances divinely. My
mother died three years ago. I do nothing useful, but I play a good
game of bridge and possess a voice that those as know pronounce
passable. I have a speaking knowledge of French, a reading knowledge
of German, and a singing knowledge of Italian. I am wearing an
imported gown, for which the House of Winslow will probably never pay.
I live in this house, and am Episcopalian--not so much High Church as
highly infrequent church. I regard the drawing-room down-stairs as the
worst example of late-Victorian abominations in my knowledge, but I
shall probably never persuade father to change it because Mason thinks
it is sacred to the past. My ambition in life is to be catty to the
Newport set after I've married an English diplomat with a divine
mustache. Never having met such a personage outside of _Tatler_ and
_Vogue_, I can't give you very many details regarding him. Oh yes, of
course, he'll have to play a marvelous game of polo and have a chateau
in Provence and also a ranch in Texas, where I shall wear
riding-breeches and live next to Nature and have a Chinese cook in
blue silk. I think that's my whole history. Oh, I forgot. I play at
the piano and am very ignorant, and completely immersed in the worst
traditions of the wealthy Micks of the Upper West Side, and I always
pretend that I live here instead of on the Upper East Side because
'the air is better.'"

"What is this Upper West Side? Is it a state of mind?"

"Indeed it is not. It's a state of pocketbook. The Upper West Side is
composed entirely of people born in New York who want to be in
society, whatever that is, and can't afford to live on Fifth Avenue.
You know everybody and went to school with everybody and played in the
Park with everybody, and mostly your papa is in wholesale trade and
haughty about people in retail. You go to Europe one summer and to the
Jersey coast the next. All your clothes and parties and weddings and
funerals might be described as 'elegant.' That's the Upper West Side.
Now the dread truth about you.... Do you know, after the unscrupulous
way in which you followed up a mere chance introduction at a tea
somewhere, I suspect you to be a well-behaved young man who leads an
entirely blameless life. Or else you'd never dare to jump the fence
and come and play in my back yard when all the other boys politely
knoc