d
Newland Archer, in the winter of the second year of his marriage, was
himself obliged to admit that if it had not actually changed it was
certainly changing.

These points had been raised, as usual, at Mrs. Archer's Thanksgiving
dinner. At the date when she was officially enjoined to give thanks
for the blessings of the year it was her habit to take a mournful
though not embittered stock of her world, and wonder what there was to
be thankful for. At any rate, not the state of society; society, if it
could be said to exist, was rather a spectacle on which to call down
Biblical imprecations--and in fact, every one knew what the Reverend
Dr. Ashmore meant when he chose a text from Jeremiah (chap. ii., verse
25) for his Thanksgiving sermon. Dr. Ashmore, the new Rector of St.
Matthew's, had been chosen because he was very "advanced": his sermons
were considered bold in thought and novel in language. When he
fulminated against fashionable society he always spoke of its "trend";
and to Mrs. Archer it was terrifying and yet fascinating to feel
herself part of a community that was trending.

"There's no doubt that Dr. Ashmore is right: there IS a marked trend,"
she said, as if it were something visible and measurable, like a crack
in a house.

"It was odd, though, to preach about it on Thanksgiving," Miss Jackson
opined; and her hostess drily rejoined: "Oh, he means us to give
thanks for what's left."

Archer had been wont to smile at these annual vaticinations of his
mother's; but this year even he was obliged to acknowledge, as he
listened to an enumeration of the changes, that the "trend" was visible.

"The extravagance in dress--" Miss Jackson began. "Sillerton took me
to the first night of the Opera, and I can only tell you that Jane
Merry's dress was the only one I recognised from last year; and even
that had had the front panel changed. Yet I know she got it out from
Worth only two years ago, because my seamstress always goes in to make
over her Paris dresses before she wears them."

"Ah, Jane Merry is one of US," said Mrs. Archer sighing, as if it were
not such an enviable thing to be in an age when ladies were beginning
to flaunt abroad their Paris dresses as soon as they were out of the
Custom House, instead of letting them mellow under lock and key, in the
manner of Mrs. Archer's contemporaries.

"Yes; she's one of the few. In my youth," Miss Jackson rejoined, "it
was considered vulgar to dress in t