cern, and on we go."

"If it's to be short, let's make it merry," she had rejoined; and
nothing had been spared that could give liveliness to their stately old
interiors, while those interiors lasted.

Mrs. Raymond Prince vaguely pronounced their house "amusing." It had,
like Adele McComas herself, a provocative dash which fell in with her
present mood, and it pleased her that its chatelaine was inclined to
dress up to its wayward sofas and hangings. She even went with Mrs.
Johnny on shopping tours and abetted her as her fancies, desires and
expenditures ran riot. It was a mood of irresponsibility--almost of
defiant irresponsibility.

Now was the nascent day of the country club. Several of these welcome
institutions had lately set themselves up in a modest, tentative way.
Acceptance was complete, and all they had to do was to grow. With one of
these McComas cast his lot. At the start it was a simple enough affair;
but Johnny must have sensed its potentialities and savored its
affinities, its coming congruity with himself. It was to become,
shortly, a club for the suddenly, violently rich, the flushed with
dollars, the congested with prosperity--for newcomers who had met
Success and beaten her at her own game. Stir on all hands, the reek of
sudden felicity in the air. In later years people with access to better
things of similar sort were known to become indignant when asked to
associate themselves with it. "Why should _I_ want to join _that_?" was
the question they put. But it pleased Johnny McComas, both by its
present manifestations and its latent possibilities. It was richly in
unison with his own nature, and I believe he had a ravishing vision of
its magnificent futurities.

Last year my wife and I were taken to a Sunday afternoon concert out
there. We found a place of towers and arcades, of endless corridors
planted with columns and numberless chairs in numberless varieties, of
fountained courts, of ball-rooms, of concert-halls, of gay apparel and
cool drinks. We heard of fairs, horse-shows, tournaments in golf and
tennis. The restaurant, with its acre of tables, glassed and naperied;
the ranges of telephone booths, all going it together; the cellars, a
vast subterrene, with dusky avenues of lockers, each cluttered with
beverages of individual predilection--though I suppose that, after all,
they were a good deal alike....

Well, it was too much for us; and my Elsie, who is essentially the lady,
if woman ever