Then, again, as to money. In the "Sacred Circle of the Great Grandmotherhood," I never heard the slightest reference to income. Not that the Whigs despised money. They were at least as fond of it as other people, and, even when it took the shape of slum-rents, its odour was not displeasing; but it was not a subject for conversation. People did not chatter about their neighbours' incomes; and, if they made their own money in trades or professions, they did not regale us with statistics of profit and loss. To-day everyone seems to be, if I may use the favourite colloquialism, "on the make"; and the devotion with which people worship money pervades their whole conversation, and colours their whole view of life. "Scions of Aristocracy," to use the good old phrase of Pennialinus, will produce samples of tea or floor-cloth from their pockets, and sue quite winningly for custom. A speculative bottle of extraordinarily cheap peach-brandy will arrive with the compliments of Lord Tom Noddy, who has just gone into the wine-trade; and Lord Magnus Charters will tell you that, if you are going to rearrange your electric light, his firm has got some really artistic fittings which he can let you have on specially easy terms. So far I have spoken of Hospitality as if it consisted wholly in eating and drinking. Not so. In those days Evening Parties, or Receptions, or Drums, or Tails, for so they were indifferently called, took place on four or five nights of every week. "Tails" as the name implies, were little parties tacked on to the end of big dinners, where a few people looked in, rather cross at not having been invited to dine, or else in a desperate hurry to get on to a larger party or a ball. The larger parties were given generally on Saturday evenings; and then, amid a crushing crowd and a din which recalled the Parrot-House at the Zoo, one might rub shoulders with all the famous men and women of the time. When Mr. St. Barbe in _Endymion_ attended a gathering of this kind, he said to his companion, "I daresay that Ambassador has been blundering all his life, and yet there is something in that Star and Ribbon. I do not know how you feel, but I could almost go down on my knees to him. 'Ye stars which are the poetry of heaven,' Byron wrote; a silly line, he should have written-- 'Ye stars which are the poetry of dress.'"