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 beauty that they somehow manage to convey the hint
that only by an unwinking watchfulness do they succeed in foiling the
onslaughts of his ogreship of avoirdupois. In their eye lurks terror
and in their lines one spells their secret of rebellious hunger; of