There's a girl under it with one of those rifle-barrel skirts. Gee!
Ssh, Jim! Did you see the lady who just passed? Let's beg her pardon for
intruding on this earth. Say, you could peel enough haughtiness off of
her to supply eight duchesses and still have enough for the lady cashier
at my hotel. I'll bet she is one of your Four Hundred. For goodness'
sake, Jim, if we pass any of your social lighthouses, point them out to
me. I'm here to see the sights.

I know the rest of the country throws it up to New York a lot because of
its Four Hundred, and that the ordinary small-town man gets so scornful
when he talks of the idle and diamond-crusted rich, with their
poodle-dog pastimes, that he lives in constant danger of stabbing his
eyes with his nose. But I'm not that way; I'm interested. Nothing
fascinates me so much as the stories in your papers about Mrs. Clymorr
Busst's clever pearl earrings, made to resemble door knobs; and about
Mrs. Spenser Coyne's determination to have Columbia University removed
because it interferes with the view from her garage; and about little
Mrs. Justin Wright's charming innocence in buying a whole steamship
whenever she goes over to Europe. I'd go a long way to see your Four
Hundred perform; and moreover, after I had accumulated a precarious
balance on an iron spike fence in order to rest one eye on a genuine
duke while he fought his way out of a church with one of your leading
local beauties, who had just been affixed to him for life, I would not
squint pityingly on the heaving mass of spectators and hiss:

"We don't do this in Homeburg."

Because we would do it fast enough if we had a chance.

We don't have anything like your Smart Set, of course, but I desire to
say with pride that while there aren't enough tiaras in Homeburg to fill
a pill box, and the only limousine we possess is the closed carriage
which is used for the family of the deceased at funerals, we have our
exclusive and magnificent class just as New York has. We haven't a Four
Hundred in Homeburg, but we have a Two Four-Hundredths. If you get as
much real, solid pleasure and amusement in New York watching your Four
Hundred as we do watching the Payleys and the Singers, I envy you.
They're worth all the trouble they cause.

For a good many years, Mrs. Wert Payley, wife of the First National
Bank, was our Smart Set, all by herself. There was never any question of
it. She admitted it, and we didn't take the trouble to deny