The American girl is so definitely a social creature, and her social attributes are so personal, that she never appears to be dependent upon social machinery. She brings into society the invaluable force of her individual availability. That our social groups seem to cohere proves that she must possess in some degree that deference to form which begins in the acceptance of terms. Humanity can never pair well until it has grouped well. Grouping is the beginning of that compromise which reaches its crisis in pairing. Even the goddess of democracy, who is presumed to dote upon calling a spade a spade, who hates the euphemisms of effete monarchical society, may not despise the butler’s baritone or the futility of attempting on one occasion six hundred different forms of adieu. Even George Eliot admitted that “a little unpremeditated insincerity must be indulged in under the stress of social intercourse.” The trouble with unpremeditated insincerities, however, is that you often wish you hadn’t said them, not (unfortunately for the symmetry of the retribution) because they were insincere, but because they were unpremeditated and inferior. It is much safer to be unpremeditated with sincerities than with insincerities, and, as the literature of social satire may help us to see, there is great hazard in any case. It is a pity, perhaps, that the great advantages of meeting your kind in your and their best clothes, must be bought so dearly, yet, as Thackeray has observed, “if we may not speak of the lady who has just left the room, what is to become of conversation and society?” [Illustration]