d at least ten thousand dollars upon her
costumes for the week. It was necessary to have a different gown for
the afternoon and evening of each day; and some, who were adepts at
quick changes and were proud of it, would wear three or four a day, and
so need a couple of dozen gowns for the show. And of course there had
to be hats and shoes and gloves to match. There would be robes of
priceless fur hung carelessly over the balcony to make a setting; and
in the evening there would be pyrotechnical displays of jewels. Mrs.
Virginia Landis wore a pair of simple pearl earrings, which she told
the reporters had cost twenty thousand dollars; and there were two
women who displayed four hundred thousand dollars' worth of
diamonds--and each of them had hired a detective to hover about in the
crowd and keep watch over her!

Nor must one suppose, because the horse was an inconspicuous part of
the show, that he was therefore an inexpensive part. One man was to be
seen here driving a four-in-hand of black stallions which had cost
forty thousand; there were other men who drove only one horse, and had
paid forty thousand for that. Half a million was a moderate estimate of
the cost of the "string" which some would exhibit. And of course these
horses were useless, save for show purposes, and to breed other horses
like them. Many of them never went out of their stables except for
exercise upon a track; and the cumbrous and enormous; expensive coaches
were never by any possibility used elsewhere--when they were taken from
place to place they seldom went upon their own wheels.

And there were people here who made their chief occupation in life the
winning of blue ribbons at these shows. They kept great country estates
especially for the horses, and had private indoor exhibition rings.
Robbie Walling and Chauncey Venable were both such people; in the
summer of next year another of the Wallings took a string across the
water to teach the horse-show game to Society in London. He took twenty
or thirty horses, under the charge of an expert manager and a dozen
assistants; he sent sixteen different kinds of carriages, and two great
coaches, and a ton of harness and other stuff. It required one whole
deck of a steamer, and the expedition enabled him to get rid of six
hundred thousand dollars.

All through the day, of course, Robbie was down in the ring with his
trainers and his competitors, and Montague sat and kept his wife
company. There was a