fashion, it is much the same. The purpose that the season clearly serves
is annually gathering into the capital great numbers of the people best
worth meeting from all parts of the world-wide English dominion, with
many aliens of distinction, not counting Americans, who are held a kind
of middle species by the natives. It is a time of perpetual breakfasts,
lunches, teas, and dinners, receptions, concerts, and for those who can
bear it, balls till the day of twenty-four hours' pleasure begins again,
with the early rites of Rotten Row. Those who have a superfluity of
invitations go on at night from one house to another till they fall
lifeless into bed at their own. One may fancy, if one likes, that they
show the effects of their pleasure the next day, that many a soft cheek
pales its English rose under the flapping panama hats among the riders
in the Park, and that, lively as they still are, they tend rather to be
phantoms of delight. But perhaps this is not so. What is certain is that
for those who do not abuse the season it is a time of fine as well as
high enjoyment, when the alien, or the middle species, if he is known,
or even tolerably imagined, may taste a cup of social kindness, of
hospitality, deeper if not richer than any in the world. I do not say
that one of the middle species will find in it the delicate, the wild,
the piquant flavors of certain remembered cups of kindness at home; and
I should not say this even if it were true; but he will be an ungrateful
and ungracious guest if he criticises. He will more wisely and justly
accuse himself of having lost his earlier zest, if he does not come away
always thinking, "What interesting people I have met!"




VI