difference in her to the daughters of any of our "smart" friends.

The library was a library because they told us so, but there were not any
books there, only groups of impossible furniture covered with magnificent
brocade, and the finest flowers one ever saw, most perfectly put in huge
vases by a really clever gardener; no subtle arrangement of colours, but
every blossom the largest there could be in nature. The tea seemed to get
mostly poured out by the servants, and the table was covered with a cloth
so encrusted with Venetian lace one's cup was unsteady on it. That is one
of the most remarkable points here--I mean America--as far as I have seen.
The table cloths at every meal are masses of lace, and every sort of
wonderful implement in the way of different gold forks and knives for every
dish lie by your plate; and such exquisite glass; and some even have old
polished tables like Aunt Maria, but instead of the simple slips they have
mats and centrepieces and squares of magnificent lace. Only the very
highest cream of the inner elect have plain table cloths and a little
silver like we do at home. And it is always a "party"--everyone is
conscious they are there, and they either assume bad manners or good ones,
but nobody is sans gêne. Octavia says it takes as long to be that as to
look like a gentleman clean shaven in evening dress. The rooms are awfully
hot, steam heated up to about 75, and it makes your head swim after a
while. There is only the son and a married daughter and husband in the
house besides ourselves and two young men. We should call them bank clerks
at home, and that is, I suppose, what they are here; only it is all
different. Every man works just like our middle classes; it is not the
least unaristocratic to be a lawyer or a doctor or a wholesale
store-keeper, or any profession you can name, so long as it makes you rich.
A man who does nothing is not considered to "amount to anything," and he
generally doesn't, either! And I suppose it must be the climate, because
directly they get immensely rich, so that the sons need not work, when it