The general had had a home life in his youth--in a
coal-miner's cabin near Wilkes-Barre. Ever since, he
had lived in boarding-houses or hotels. As his shrewd
and rapacious mind had gathered in more and more
wealth, he had lived more and more luxuriously--but
always at hotels. He had seen little of the private life
of the rich. Thus he had been compelled to get his
ideas of luxury and of ceremonial altogether from the
hotel-keepers and caterers who give the rich what the
more intelligent and informed of the rich are usually
shamed by people of taste from giving themselves at
home.

She thought the tablecloth, napkins, and gaudy gold
and flowery cut glass a little overdone, but on the whole
not so bad. She had seen such almost as grand at a
few New York houses. The lace in the cloth and in
the napkins was merely a little too magnificent. It
made the table lumpy, it made the napkins unfit for use.
But the way the dinner was served! You would have
said you were in a glorified palace-hotel restaurant.
You looked about for the cashier's desk; you were certain
a bill would be presented after the last course.

The general, tinier and more grotesque than ever in
the great high-backed, richly carved armchair, surveyed
the progress of the banquet with the air of a god
performing miracles of creation and passing them in
review and giving them his divine endorsement. He was