rful the subject, the more they think it is what it ought to be. They
have an idea this is the way to make New York society intellectual.
There's a sumptuary law--isn't that what you call it?--about suppers,
and they restrict themselves to a kind of Spartan broth. When it's made
by their French cooks it isn't bad. Mrs. Burrage is one of the principal
members--one of the founders, I believe; and when her turn has come
round, formerly--it comes only once in the winter for each--I am told
she has usually had very good music. But that is thought rather a base
evasion, a begging of the question; the vulgar set can easily keep up
with them on music. So Mrs. Burrage conceived the extraordinary
idea"--and it was wonderful to hear how Mrs. Luna pronounced that
adjective--"of sending on to Boston for that girl. It was her son, of
course, who put it into her head; he has been at Cambridge for some
years--that's where Verena lived, you know--and he was as thick with her
as you please out there. Now that he is no longer there it suits him
very well to have her here. She is coming on a visit to his mother when
Olive goes. I asked them to stay with me, but Olive declined,
majestically; she said they wished to be in some place where they would
be free to receive 'sympathising friends.' So they are staying at some
extraordinary kind of New Jerusalem boarding-house, in Tenth Street;
Olive thinks it's her duty to go to such places. I was greatly surprised
that she should let Verena be drawn into such a worldly crowd as this;
but she told me they had made up their minds not to let _any_ occasion
slip, that they could sow the seed of truth in drawing-rooms as well as
in workshops, and that if a single person was brought round to their
ideas they should have been justified in coming on. That's what they are
doing in there--sowing the seed; but you shall not be the one that's
brought round, I shall take care of that. Have you seen my delightful
sister yet? The way she _does_ arrange herself when she wants to protest
against frills! She looks as if she thought it pretty barren ground
round here, now she has come to see it. I don't think she thinks you can
be saved in a French dress, anyhow. I must say I call it a _very_ base
evasion of Mrs. Burrage's, producing Verena Tarrant; it's worse than the
meretricious music. Why didn't she honestly send for a _ballerina_ from
Niblo's--if she wanted a young woman capering about on a platform? They
don't c