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 parade, and that if women look back with pride, as they may, upon their personal achievements and labors, they will also regard them with astonishment.  Women, we read every day, long for the rights and privileges of men, and the education and serious purpose in life of men.  And yet, such is the sweet self-sacrifice of their nature, they voluntarily take on burdens which men have never assumed, and which they would speedily cast off if they had.  What should we say of men if they consumed half their time in paying formal calls upon each other merely for the sake of paying calls, and were low-spirited if they did not receive as many cards as they had dealt out to society?  Have they not the time?  Have women more time? and if they have, why should they spend it in this