But this is one side of life. There is another and a more purely
social side which is a very different thing. Into this affairs of
state do not enter; with the right or wrong of vital questions it does
not concern itself at all; and in fact it is doubtful if politics are
not thought there mere subsidiaries to the authority of Fashion, and
if the fair wives and daughters of our lawgivers do not regard the
great machinery of state as something ordained solely to sustain them
in their brilliant round as the wind of the juggler's fan supports his
paper butterflies upon their airy flight. In this life an etiquette
reigns that has no law of its being save that of vague tradition--an
etiquette at variance with that of other regions, and through which
the female population is resolved into what might be termed, in the
parlance of the place, a committee of the whole on "calling." This
etiquette rules the wives of important functionaries with a rod
of iron. By some occult method of reasoning they have reached the
conclusion that their husbands' popularity, and consequent lease
of power, depend upon their own faithful performance of what is
considered to be social duty, and they devote themselves to it with
a zeal worthy of a better cause. On certain days of the week their
houses are open to all who choose to come; and both residents and
passing travelers, all who wish to inspect the inside of such homes
among the other sights of the town, throng the doors, leave cards
and partake of refreshments. Of course many strange occurrences are
incidental to such occasions; and so the lady whose beauty had been
made famous must have thought when unknown crowds flocked to see her,
destroying daily a vase or a statuette, a photograph or a book,
but always staring with all their eyes, and one day crowning their
enormities with a procession of deaf-mutes from an asylum, which filed
in and gazed and filed out again, in total silence of course, save now
and then a crack of nimble finger-joints.