vulgar luxury has not yet cumbrously succeeded to a sort of sylvan
distinction.

The type of its simple and sufficing hospitalities is the seven-o'clock
supper. Every one, in hotel or in cottage, dines between one and two,
and no less scrupulously sups at seven, unless it is a few extremists who
sup at half-past seven. At this function, which is our chief social
event, it is 'de rigueur' for the men not to dress, and they come in any
sort of sack or jacket or cutaway, letting the ladies make up the pomps
which they forego. From this fact may be inferred the informality of the
men's day-time attire; and the same note is sounded in the whole range of
the cottage life, so that once a visitor from the world outside, who had
been exasperated beyond endurance by the absence of form among us (if
such an effect could be from a cause so negative), burst out with the
reproach, "Oh, you make a fetish of your informality!"

"Fetish" is, perhaps, rather too strong a word, but I should not mind
saying that informality was the tutelary genius of the place. American
men are everywhere impatient of form. It burdens and bothers them, and
they like to throw it off whenever they can. We may not be so very
democratic at heart as we seem, but we are impatient of ceremonies that
separate us when it is our business or our pleasure to get at one
another; and it is part of our splendor to ignore the ceremonies, as we
do the expenses. We have all the decent grades of riches and poverty in
our colony, but our informality is not more the treasure of the humble
than of the great. In the nature of things it cannot last, however, and
the only question is how long it will last. I think, myself, until some
one imagines giving an eight-o'clock dinner; then all the informalities
will go, and the whole train of evils which such a dinner connotes will
rush in.