Students of sociology have of recent years made great strides in their alleviation of the conditions prevailing among the poor; but is it not a fact that, as a notorious daily paper lately asked, the study of those conditions appears to attract the interest of only the lighter sort of society people and the pens of only the most ambitious novelists? And that the benefits of this study, at least to novelists, are not mean, was proved beyond all doubt only the other day, when perhaps the wealthiest of contemporary writers increased his fortune by writing a tale about a miser in a slum. No one, on the other hand, will deny that the achievements of sociologists among the poor are as nothing compared with those of students of hospitality who, poor and unrewarded though they remain, have of late years done yeoman work in alleviating the conditions prevailing among the rich. It is to the generous spadework of men such as these that American hostesses in Europe owe the betterment of their lot; and it is by the support of their merciful hands that ladies burdened with great wealth are prevented from sinking down in the rarefied atmosphere to which they have been called. Mere students of hospitality had not, however, been strong enough to support the ailing burden of Mrs. Omroy Pont when that lady had first come over from America at the call of certain voices that had advised her that her mission lay in European society. It had needed graduates of that brotherhood, lean with endeavour in ball-rooms and browned with the suns of the Riviera, to prevent that ample lady from succumbing to the exhaustion of carrying her wealth through the halls of her houses in London and Paris among guests who had failed to catch her name on being introduced. But the Good Samaritans had worked unceasingly on her behalf, and since Mrs. Omroy Pont had both great wealth and infinite insensibility she was soon in a position to give a ball at which quite half the guests knew her by sight. The morning after the Duke’s arrival in Paris there was this notice in the Continental _Daily Mail_: “The Duke of Mall has arrived at his residence in the Avenue du Bois, and will spend the spring in Paris.” And presently the good Mrs. Omroy Pont was on the telephone, first here, then there and finally to the Duke himself, saying: “My dear Duke, how do you do, how do you do? I am so glad you are in Paris just now, Paris is so attractive in the spring. You mustn’t fail to see the tulips in the Tuileries, they are as beautiful as _débutantes_. My dear Duke, I am giving a party to-morrow night, you must come, you really must come, now don’t say you won’t because I can’t bear that, and really I must say, my dear Duke, that your unfortunate inability to accept any of my invitations so far has seemed almost marked, whereas----” “I am afraid,” began the Duke, who had not the faintest intention of going anywhere near one of Mrs. Omroy Pont’s parties, for she bored him and life is short.