the apple-bee and sugar-party stage, and this opened the inquiry as to
how far the church still formed the social life of the people in cities.
Some one suggested that in Brooklyn it formed it altogether, and then
they laughed, for Brooklyn is always a joke with the New-Yorkers; I do
not know exactly why, except that this vast city is so largely a suburb,
and that it has a great number of churches and is comparatively cheap.
Then another told of a lady who had come to New York (he admitted, twenty
years ago), and was very lonely, as she had no letters until she joined a
church. This at once brought her a general acquaintance, and she began to
find herself in society; but as soon as she did so she joined a more
exclusive church, where they took no notice of strangers. They all
laughed at that bit of human nature, as they called it, and they
philosophized the relation of women to society as a purely business
relation. The talk ranged to the mutable character of society, and how
people got into it, or were of it, and how it was very different from
what it once was, except that with women it was always business. They
spoke of certain new rich people with affected contempt; but I could see
that they were each proud of knowing such millionaires as they could
claim for acquaintance, though they pretended to make fun of the number
of men-servants you had to run the gantlet of in their houses before you
could get to your hostess.

One of my commensals said he had noticed that I took little or no wine,
and, when I said that we seldom drank it in Altruria, he answered that he
did not think I could make that go in America, if I meant to dine much.
"Dining, you know, means overeating," he explained, "and if you wish to
overeat you must overdrink. I venture to say that you will pass a worse
night than any of us, Mr. Homos, and that you will be sorrier to-morrow
than I shall." They were all smoking, and I confess that their tobacco
was secretly such an affliction to me that I was at one moment in doubt