Ethel Bumpschus is rushing preparations for her wedding to the Duke of Nocastle, and vastly amusing we find it. The upper floors of the Bumpschus house, Pearl Veal tells me, look as though some large business enterprise were being carried on, as there is a constant coming and going of milliners, dress-makers, and tailors, hurrying the costumes for the great show; and above it all sounds the ceaseless click of Tumbleton Tumm's type-writer. Poor Tumm! He regularly writes scandal for _Town Twaddle_ and has a hard time to keep that fact a secret, retain his membership in one club, look respectable and make both ends meet; so that when Mrs. Bumpschus called him in to help them it was a great boon. They should give him a fat retainer for his press-agent work, for I must say he is doing it well, as the papers daily chronicle every act of the Duke and his fiancée. He realizes how eagerly the public devours this kind of reading-matter, and his type-writer goes all day as he prepares the feast. Interest has been aroused to a high pitch. Were it not for Tumm's pride, he would do well on the Rialto, for in some of his work he has evinced signs of positive genius. I remember when Ethel's cousin married Nothingham a furor was created by the illustrated-page articles describing her entire trousseau. We have progressed wonderfully since then, for Tumm is making that a serial story and got five columns on hosiery alone in every Sunday paper in town. This is but one of many masterly strokes. I must say that to me there is something pathetic in the picture of this bearer of a fine old New York name, reduced to a task that cannot but be distasteful to him, for though he may have a saving gleam of humor, he cannot but feel that in every way he is the better of his employers. But it is his father's fault. Hegerton Tumm was one of those gentlemen of the old school, a Patriarch with a house in Washington Square and all that. He never worked. He looked down on Grandfather Bumpschus, who was busy wrecking railroads and piling up other people's money. He died and left his children to social charity. I remember before I took to golf and tennis, that somewhere in the church service there was a reference to dust returning to dust. How keen those old Bible fellows were! It seems as though they must have foreseen the first Tumm crawling on his knees among the cabbages of his patch in Union Square; must have foreseen real estate rise and carry with it to power half a hundred Tumms; and, last, poor Tumbleton on his knees again, a mere retainer in the railroad house of Bumpschus.