The T. Pennypacker Higgingbothams reached the metropolis, a short while ago, from the social ooze of the Texas oil fields. They wanted to break into society, but, alas, a fondness for eating and a fortune of twenty millions were all that they had to do it with. These pictures mirror their progress in the frigid marble-and-gold society of our inhospitable city. They are here shown at their first important dinner--a little repast of eight--at their palace, a palace which, architecturally considered, is a cross between the Temple of Karnak and Charing Cross Station. They are wisely beginning their social climb among the intellectual set. Brains are the best things to climb on until you got fairly high up, when you can safely discard them. Reading from left to right, T. Pennypacker Higgingbotham; Marietta Pillsbury Powyss, author of “The Fear of Love,” “More Than Kisses”; Frederick von Nippelzow, Professor of Czech, and the Slav and Bulgar languages at Oxford; Miss Sophronisba Ottway, Japanese lacquer worker, Etruscan embosser, designer of Indian art-jewelry; Guido Bruno Pfaff, lecturer on Malthusianism, Mendelism and sea worms; Babette La Rue, smock designer, garden-stick maker, flower-pot varnisher, book-end painter, art stenciler and jig-saw artist; Bliss Merriweather Gow, play-reader, author of nine Shakespearean masques, creator of a ballet entitled “The Birth of Passion”; and, finally, the dazed Hostess, about to go down for the third time. [Illustration] HEARTS AND DIAMONDS The Higgingbothams were told that they could do nothing without a social secretary. They accordingly engaged Miss Audrey De Vere, a young lady of lineage. Audrey smokes, drinks, and plays “poker”: she also knows how to get first-night tickets at the theatres and an outside table at a cabaret. She can mix eleven different kinds of cocktails with only one bottle of gin, one lemon, two bottles of Vermouth and a single olive. She is engaged to a war hero--her vis-a-vis at this table. The dinner has been cleared away and Audrey and her friends have just finished a little session with the cards. Net result: the T. Pennypacker Higgingbothams are minus the value of one small Texas oil well. THE RECEPTION COMMITTEE Front elevation of Mr. and Mrs. H. at the head of the grand stairway leading to the gold organ room in their palace. Mr. and Mrs. H. are expecting forty more or less strangers to dine with them. Gold favors will be found under the napkins. Twenty pairs of footmen’s calves, in wood, have just been successfully adjusted by the H’s footmen, in the magenta and gold dining room, brought, at some expense, from Verocchio’s palace in Venice. [Illustration] [Illustration] THE ATTACK ON BOHEMIA