together to change the smug structure of American society, and bring
us back to normalcy.

Before 1865 no Southern belle considered herself worth her salt unless
all the courtly old married men in the country kissed her hand and
competed with the young blades for her quadrilles. But when black
persons stopped buttoning up the shoes of the Quality, America entered
upon her 1870's, her sombre brown stone fronts, and her cloistered
husbands. The money for doing society had simply passed into the hands
of the descendants of Miles Standish and Priscilla, who carried their
consciences into their sober mansions with them. The Age of Innocence
was upon us, and has clung close ever since.

From that fatal day on to 1917 each oncoming debutante was taught by
her mother to give unto the genus, married man, her most impersonal
manner, lest she provoke his "undesirable attentions." If poaching was
done, it was from behind a tree. Unmarried girls knew that their place
was not in somebody else's home in those days. The wives could protect
their preserves by the simple expedient of "talking about" any
unmarried young female caught on the married reservations.

And so it came to pass that the pick of the men were posted, because,
as fast as a callow youth gets worth marrying, somebody promptly
marries him. The Fast Young Married Crowd was a closed corporation and
played exclusively within itself; the female of the species had to
compete only with females of equal tonnage. The only sylph-like
temptation that a husband could encounter was a dissolute person whose
reputation had already been ruined--and she didn't count, because
nobody invited her to parties anyway. A wife could get as fat as she
wanted to in those days.