Subdivision of labor is one of the triumphs of modern civilization.
Labor was beautifully subdivided in this lady's household. It was old
Ketchum's business to make money, and he understood it. It was Mrs. K.'s
business to spend money, and she knew how to do it. The rooms blazed
with light like a conflagration; the flowers burned like lamps of
many-colored flame; the music throbbed into the hearts of the
promenaders and tingled through all the muscles of the dancers.

Mrs. Clymer Ketchum was in her glory. Her _point d'Alencon_ must have
spoiled ever so many French girls' eyes. Her bosom heaved beneath a kind
of breastplate glittering with a heavy dew of diamonds. She glistened
and sparkled with every movement, so that the admirer forgot to question
too closely whether the eyes matched the brilliants, or the cheeks
glowed like the roses. Not far from the great lady stood Myrtle Hazard.
She was dressed as the fashion of the day demanded, but she had added
certain audacious touches of her own, reminiscences of the time when the
dead beauty had flourished, and which first provoked the question and
then the admiration of the young people who had a natural eye for
effect. Over the long white glove on her left arm was clasped a rich
bracelet, of so quaint an antique pattern that nobody had seen anything
like it, and as some one whispered that it was "the last thing out," it
was greatly admired by the fashion-plate multitude, as well as by the
few who had a taste of their own. If the soul of Judith Pride, long
divorced from its once beautifully moulded dust, ever lived in dim
consciousness through any of those who inherited her blood, it was then
and there that she breathed through the lips of Myrtle Hazard. The young
girl almost trembled with the ecstasy of this new mode of being,
soliciting every sense with light, with perfume, with melody,--all that
could make her feel the wonderful complex music of a fresh life when all
its chords first vibrate together in harmony. Miss Rhadamantha Pinnikle,
whose mother was an Apex (of whose race it was said that they always
made an obeisance when the family name was mentioned, and had all their
portraits painted with halos round their heads), found herself
extinguished in this new radiance. Miss Victoria Capsheaf stuck to the
wall as if she had been a fresco on it. The fifty-year-old dynasties
were dismayed and dismounted. Myrtle fossilized them as suddenly as if
she had been a Gorgon, in