in the performance, and usually of less satisfaction in the retrospect
than any other social function. However carefully the guests are
selected, it lacks the spontaneity that gives intellectual zest to the
chance dining together of friends. This Delancy party was made up for
reasons which are well understood, and it seemed to have been admirably
well selected; and yet the moment it assembled it was evident that it
could not be very brilliant or very enjoyable. Doubtless you, madam,
would have arranged it differently, and not made it up of such
incongruous elements.

As a matter of fact, scarcely one of those present would not have had
more enjoyment somewhere else. Father Damon, whose theory was that the
rich needed saving quite as much as the poor, would nevertheless have
been in better spirits sitting down to a collation with the working-women
in Clinton Place. It was a good occasion for the cynical observation of
Mr. Mavick, but it was not a company that he could take in hand and
impress with his mysterious influence in public affairs. Henderson was
not in the mood, and would have had much more ease over a chop and a
bottle of half-and-half with Uncle Jerry. Carmen, socially triumphant,
would have been much more in her element at a petit souper of a not too
fastidious four. Mrs. Schuyler Blunt was in the unaccustomed position of
having to maintain a not too familiar and not too distant line of
deportment. Edith and Jack felt the responsibility of having put an
incongruous company on thin conventional ice. It was only the easy-going
Miss Tavish and two or three others who carried along their own animal
spirits and love of amusement who enjoyed the chance of a possible
contretemps.

And yet the dinner was providentially arranged. If these people had not
met socially, this history would have been different from what it must