I must say, to the credit of the Americans, that although
the eating and drinking among them appear gross enough
to an Altrurian, you are not revolted by the coarse
stories which the English sometimes tell as soon as
the ladies have left them. If it is a men’s
dinner, or more especially a men’s supper, these
stories are pretty sure to follow the coffee; but
when there have been women at the board, some sense
of their presence seems to linger in the more delicate
American nerves, and the indulgence is limited to
two or three things off color, as the phrase is here,
told with anxious glances at the drawing-room doors,
to see if they are fast shut.
I do not remember just what brought the talk back
from these primrose paths to that question of American
society forms, but presently some one said he believed
the church-sociable was the thing in most towns beyond
the apple-bee and sugar-party stage, and this opened
the inquiry as to how far the church still formed
the social life of the people in cities. Some
one suggested that in Brooklyn it formed it altogether,
and then they laughed, for Brooklyn is always a joke
with the New-Yorkers; I do not know exactly why, except
that this vast city is so largely a suburb, and that
it has a great number of churches and is comparatively
cheap. Then another told of a lady who had come
to New York (he admitted, twenty years ago), and was
very lonely, as she had no letters until she joined
a church. This at once brought her a general
acquaintance, and she began to find herself in society;
but as soon as she did so she joined a more exclusive
church, where they took no notice of strangers.
They all laughed at that bit of human nature, as they
called it, and they philosophized the relation of
women to society as a purely business relation.
The talk ranged to the mutable character of society,
and how people got into it, or were of it, and how
it was very different from what it once was, except
that with women it was always business. They
spoke of certain new rich people with affected contempt;
but I could see that they were each proud of knowing
such millionaires as they could claim for acquaintance,
though they pretended to make fun of the number of
men-servants you had to run the gantlet of in their
houses before you could get to your hostess.
One of my commensals said he had noticed that I took
little or no wine, and, when I said that we seldom
drank it in Altruria, he answered that he did not
think I could make that go in America, if I meant to
dine much. “Dining, you know, means overeating,”
he explained, “and if you wish to overeat you
must overdrink. I venture to say that you will
pass a worse night than any of us, Mr. Homos, and
that you will be sorrier to-morrow than I shall.”
They were all smoking, and I confess that their tobacco
was secretly such an affliction to me that I was at
one moment in doubt whether I should take a cigar
myself or ask leave to join the ladies.
