We did not go out to dinner at Mrs. Makely's by the rules of English
precedence, because there are nominally no ranks here, and we could not;
but I am sure it will not be long before the Americans will begin playing
at precedence just as they now play at the other forms of aristocratic
society. For the present, however, there was nothing for us to do but to
proceed, when dinner was served, in such order as offered itself, after
Mr. Makely gave his arm to Mrs. Strange; though, of course, the white
shoulders of the other ladies went gleaming out before the white
shoulders of Mrs. Makely shone beside my black ones. I have now become so
used to these observances that they no longer affect me as they once did,
and as I suppose my account of them must affect you, painfully,
comically. But I have always the sense of having a part in amateur
theatricals, and I do not see how the Americans can fail to have the same
sense, for there is nothing spontaneous in them, and nothing that has
grown even dramatically out of their own life.

Often when I admire the perfection of the stage-setting, it is with a
vague feeling that I am derelict in not offering it an explicit applause.
In fact, this is permitted in some sort and measure, as now when we sat
down at Mrs. Makely's exquisite table, and the ladies frankly recognized
her touch in it. One of them found a phrase for it at once, and
pronounced it a symphony in chrysanthemums; for the color and the
character of these flowers played through all the appointments of the
table, and rose to a magnificent finale in the vast group in the middle
of the board, infinite in their caprices of tint and design. Another lady
said that it was a dream, and then Mrs. Makely said, "No, a memory," and
confessed that she had studied the effect from her recollection of some
tables at a chrysanthemum show held here year before last, which seemed
failures because they were so simply and crudely adapted in the china and
napery to merely one kind and color of the flower.