this, perhaps, is not stranger than the fact that ladies wear hats in
the theatre, while the men who accompany them are in evening dress--a
curious habit which to the uninitiated observer would suggest that the
nymphs belonged to a less fashionable stratum than their attendant
swains. A parallel instance is that of afternoon receptions, where the
hostess and her myrmidons appear in ball costume, while the visitors
are naturally in the toilette of the street. The contrast thus evolved
of low necks and heavy furs is often very comical. The British
convention by which the hostess always dresses as plainly as possible
so as to avoid the chance of eclipsing any of her guests, and so
chooses to _briller par sa simplicité_, is in other cases also more
honoured in the breach than in the observance in America.

A very characteristic little piece of the social democracy of America
is seen at its best in Chicago, though not unknown in other large
cities. On the evening of a hot summer day cushions and rugs are
spread on the front steps of the houses, and the occupants take
possession of these, the men to enjoy their after-dinner cigars, the
women to talk and scan the passers-by. The general effect is very
genial and picturesque, and decidedly suggestive of democratic
sociability. The same American indifference to the exaggerated British
love of privacy which leads John Bull to enclose his fifty-foot-square
garden by a ten-foot wall is shown in the way in which the gardens of
city houses are left unfenced. Nothing can be more attractive in its
way than such a street as Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, where the pretty
villas stand in unenclosed gardens, and the verdant lawns melt
imperceptibly into each other without advertisement of where one
leaves off and the other begins, while the fronts towards the street
are equally exposed. The general effect is that of a large and
beautiful park dotted with houses. The American is essentially