st part they do not wish to
see. What is gained, he asks, by leaving cards with all these people and
receiving their cards? When a woman makes her tedious rounds, why is she
always relieved to find people not in? When she can count upon her ten
fingers the people she wants to see, why should she pretend to want to
see the others? Is any one deceived by it? Does anybody regard it as
anything but a sham and a burden? Much the cynic knows about it! Is it
not necessary to keep up what is called society? Is it not necessary to
have an authentic list of pasteboard acquaintances to invite to the
receptions? And what would become of us without Receptions? Everybody
likes to give them. Everybody flocks to them with much alacrity. When
society calls the roll, we all know the penalty of being left out. Is
there any intellectual or physical pleasure equal to that of jamming so
many people into a house that they can hardly move, and treating them to
a Babel of noises in which no one can make herself heard without
screaming? There is nothing like a reception in any uncivilized country.
It is so exhilarating! When a dozen or a hundred people are gathered
together in a room, they all begin to raise their voices and to shout
like pool-sellers in the noble rivalry of "warious langwidges," rasping
their throats into bronchitis in the bidding of the conversational ring.
If they spoke low, or even in the ordinary tone, conversation would be
possible. But then it would not be a reception, as we understand it. We
cannot neglect anywhere any of the pleasures of our social life. We train
for it in lower assemblies. Half a dozen women in a "call" are obliged to
shout, just for practice, so that they can be heard by everybody in the
neighborhood except themselves. Do not men do the same? If they do, it
only shows that men also are capable of the higher civilization.

But does society--that is, the intercourse of congenial people--depend
upon the elaborate system of exchanging calls with hundreds of people who
are not congenial? Such thoughts will sometimes come by a winter fireside
of rational-talking friends, or at a dinner-party not too large for talk
without a telephone, or in the summer-time by the sea, or in the cottage
in the hills, when the fever of social life has got down to a normal
temperature. We fancy that sometimes people will give way to a real
enjoyment of life and that human intercourse will throw off this
artificial and wearisome