the greatest talker among us, would be impatient of the delay eked out
here by the great number and the slow procession of the courses served.
Yet the poorest American would find his ideal realized rather in the
long-drawn-out gluttony of the society dinner here than in our temperate
simplicity.

At such a dinner it is very hard to avoid a surfeit, and I have to guard
myself very carefully, lest, in the excitement of the talk, I gorge
myself with everything, in its turn. Even at the best, my overloaded
stomach often joins with my conscience in reproaching me for what you
would think a shameful excess at table. Yet, wicked as my riot is, my
waste is worse, and I have to think, with contrition, not only of what I
have eaten, but of what I have left uneaten, in a city where so many
wake and sleep in hunger.

The ladies made a show of lingering after we joined them in the
drawing-room; but there were furtive glances at the clock, and presently
her guests began to bid Mrs. Strange good-night. When I came up and
offered her my hand, she would not take it, but murmured, with a kind of
passion: "Don't go! I mean it! Stay, and tell us about Altruria--my
mother and me!"

I was by no means loath, for I must confess that all I had seen and heard
of this lady interested me in her more and more. I felt at home with her,
too, as with no other society woman I have met; she seemed to me not only
good, but very sincere, and very good-hearted, in spite of the world she
lived in. Yet I have met so many disappointments here, of the kind that
our civilization wholly fails to prepare us for, that I should not have
been surprised to find that Mrs. Strange had wished me to stay, not that
she might hear me talk about Altruria, but that I might hear her talk