magnificent
brocade, and the finest flowers one ever saw, most perfectly put in huge
vases by a really clever gardener; no subtle arrangement of colours, but
every blossom the largest there could be in nature. The tea seemed to get
mostly poured out by the servants, and the table was covered with a cloth
so encrusted with Venetian lace one's cup was unsteady on it. That is one
of the most remarkable points here--I mean America--as far as I have seen.
The table cloths at every meal are masses of lace, and every sort of
wonderful implement in the way of different gold forks and knives for every
dish lie by your plate; and such exquisite glass; and some even have old
polished tables like Aunt Maria, but instead of the simple slips they have
mats and centrepieces and squares of magnificent lace. Only the very
highest cream of the inner elect have plain table cloths and a little
silver like we do at home. And it is always a "party"--everyone is
conscious they are there, and they either assume bad manners or good ones,
but nobody is sans gene. Octavia says it takes as long to be that as to
look like a gentleman clean shaven in evening dress. The rooms are awfully
hot, steam heated up to about 75, and it makes your head swim after a
while. There is only the son and a married daughter and husband in the
house besides ourselves and two young men. We should call them bank clerks
at home, and that is, I suppose, what they are here; only it is all
different. Every man works just like our middle classes; it is not the
least unaristocratic to be a lawyer or a doctor or a wholesale
store-keeper, or any profession you can name, so long as it makes you rich.
A man who does nothing is not considered to "amount to anything," and he
generally doesn't, either! And I suppose it must be the climate, because
directly they get immensely rich, so that the sons need not work, when it
gets to the third generation, they often are invalids or weaklings, or have
some funny vice or mania, and lots of them die of drink; which shows it is
intended in some climates for men to work. Octavia says it takes centuries
of wielding battle-axes and commanding vassals to give the consciousness of
superiority which enables people to be idle without being vicious; but Tom
says it is because they don't hunt and shoot, and go to the bench, and
attend to their estates and county business; so instead they have to go
crazy over fast motoring or flying machines, or any fad