Singer young folks joined it.
It took two meetings for us to discover what had clogged up the
atmosphere and taken the prance out of things. Then we tumbled. The
Payleys and Singers were educating us. They were fitting us to live in
the rarified upper altitudes of refinement and to mingle with rank
without stepping all over its feet. By the third meeting Henry Snyder
had caught on to most of the signals and he explained them to a lot of
us beforehand with care. When Sally Singer dropped on to a bench and
moved her skirt ever so slightly aside it was a sign that the young man
with whom she was speaking might sit down and hold sweet converse. And
when Sarah Payley smiled brightly at a gentleman from some distance and
just caressed the chair beside her with her eye for the millionth part
of a second, that young man, if he had a spark of gentility in him,
would hurdle the intervening chairs to arrive. We also discovered how
to get away just before the young ladies got bored, by other delicate
signs, and how to derive the fact that they were thirsty and needed
sustenance, and just how to imprison them in our strong but respectful
arms during a waltz, and how to collect fans and gloves and programs and
handkerchiefs from the floor without grunting or jolting the
conversation. It was hard work, and spoiled the evening to a certain
extent, but we did the best we could until Jim Reebe spoiled it all in
the fourth lesson. Miss Singer had collected her usual six men during
the intermission with as many bright glances, and was being admired
properly and according to Hoyle, when Jim up and remarks, in his
megaphone bass: "Say, Sall, you're a great work of art, but the time you
made a hit with me was the day you slid down the banisters at school."

That finished the course; and the Smart Set, being unanimously absent
the rest of the winter, we gave ourselves up to vulgar pleasure, stuffed
our white gloves back into the bureaus and yelled for encores when we
couldn't get them any other way.

I'll tell you, a man could be a hero to his valet with half the exertion
which it takes to be a Somebody to an old grammar-school mate in a small
town.

Our Smart Set is disintegrating now, and things look blue for social
progress in Homeburg. Sally Singer is getting ready to be married this
summer to a Pittsburgh man who wears a cane. The remaining three look
like the old guard at Waterloo closing in under a heavy fire. Looks to
me as if ther