weariness of dinner giving and dinner eating: may look towards a
triumphant overthrow of those problems on what forks to use, what
jewels to adopt, what mannerisms to affect and what fads to uplift. As
our persons are no more sacred than our habits we feel that our vanity
is never safe; and our present despot, who owns a Turkish taste in
femininity, and insists on the fashionableness of fat, unhappy is the
woman who, like Mrs. Spottletoe of Chuzzlewit fame, is lean and dry
and errs on the side of slimness.

* * * * *

The dawn of the racing season alters the bucolic character of the
roads leading to Morris Park and makes them gay and noisy
thoroughfares--conglomerations of smart traps and rainbow frocks. The
drive to and from the track is the jolliest feature of a programme
that--as is not uncommonly the case where the mighty are
involved--smacks not a little of sameness. The inevitable lunch at the
club house is occasionally enlivened by a friendly tiff over the
possession of a piazza table where is offered a view of the course
combined with the comforts of repletion, and is, in consequence,
considered a vantage point of desirability. We meet the same people,
and we eat of the same dishes disguised in the same service, that
daily play the routine of our fashion; for, as Thackeray says of his
British, wherever we may go, we carry with us our pills and our
prejudices. And there be times, too, when we almost echo those
cravings of poor Becky Sharp who, having attained the summits of
society, cries in the desperation of her ennui: "Oh, how much gayer it
would be to dance in spangles in a booth!"

* * * * *

That enterprising bachelor, Mr. James Henry Smith, evinces a nice
taste in matters feminine. His much-to-be-desired box seat is not
infrequently embellished by the presence of Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt,
who this year shows a preference for the varying shades of Quaker
gray, and was recently admired in a cloth of that color made with a
plain skirt and a blousing coat with bishop sleeves. Mrs. Alfred
likewise leans modestly towards the dove and is shown at her best in
a soft pale frock trimmed with passementerie of the same shade and
topped by a large hat of black chip tipped well towards the right
side. Mrs. Alfred is young enough to ignore the ravages of a possible
embonpoint, but there be other matrons who hang so uncertainly about
that borderland of