Here, certainly, was food for thought. Could anything more piquantly have illustrated the relativity of the term Society, more brilliantly have demolished the pretension that Society has any geography? We have our book definitions, by which we agree glibly to say that society is the cultured, the fashionable, the favored class (or elsewise, according to your dictionary) of “any community”; but how easy it is for city pretence (and provincialism is never so arrogant as in big cities) to see in its own set the true title to social eminence. It is indicative of that interesting individualism which prevails in the United States, and which perhaps we may learn to prize as one of the precious products of democracy, that no town regards itself as small in any sense that shall restrict or disqualify its individuals. This is particularly true of towns in their feminine population. You may find a community without gas, electric light, telephones or a board of trade, but you shall not on that account decide that it is too small to have a woman’s club and a social calendar. We are accustomed to say that it all is a question of degree. When Adam delved and Eve span Who was then the gentleman? [Illustration] We are accustomed to admit that in the senate of society even the small states shall say their say. But scarcely can we realize without much travel how far the fact that this country is too big for the focussing of society in any one, two, or dozen places, affects the demeanor and development of the social units. The fact that there are widely prevalent formulæ, helps us first to the assumption, safe enough, that these are applied, that there is a wish and an occasion to use them in some way. They help us further to an estimate of the relative activity of social forces, to the points of emphasis. But there is one thing the wide use of formulæ never will help you to find out, and that is the most interesting fact of all--the local flavor of the conformity. Society is an Established Church in whose pews the dissenters form a majority; and if I could, by some chance, have let my train go by and have been admitted into the circle of that village society, I certainly should have found that while it gave a sort of lip-service to the social creeds, this society had its own way of doing so, and that it adopted lightheartedly, like its new byword or improved flounce, certain phrases, certain dicta of the world’s larger social groups, for its own purposes, with its own reservations. I do not deny that I have seen social formulæ grimly and mechanically used in certain quarters, but the whimsical reservation is more characteristic. [Illustration]