It might be seized at any moment by an English Duke or a Lady Agatha and strangled to death. Even the butlers in the late 'eighties were wits, and served epigrams with cucumber sandwiches; and a person entering one of these drawing-rooms and talking in connected sentences--easily understood by everybody--each with one subject, predicate and meaning, would have been looked upon as a high class moron. One might as well have gone to a dinner at Lady Coventry's without one's collar, as without one's kit of trained paradoxes. [Illustration: "The butlers served epigrams with the cucumber sandwiches."] A late Autumn afternoon in one of these semi-Oscar Wilde plays, for instance, would run something like this: SCENE--_The Octagon Room in Lord Raymond Eaveston's Manor House in Stropshire._ LADY EAVESTON and SIR THOMAS WAFFLETON _are discovered, arranging red flowers in a vase_. SIR T.: I detest red flowers; they are so yellow. LADY E.: What a cynic you are, Sir Thomas. I really must not listen to you or I shall hear something that you say. SIR T.: Not at all, my dear Lady Eaveston. I detest people who listen closely; they are so inattentive. LADY E.: Pray do not be analytical, my dear Sir Thomas. When people are extremely analytical with me I am sure that they are superficial, and, to me, nothing is more abominable than superficiality, unless perhaps it is an intolerable degree of thoroughness. (_Enter Meadows, the Butler_) MEADOWS (_announcing_): Sir Mortimer Longley and Mrs. Wrennington,--a most remarkable couple,--I may say in announcing them,--in that there is nothing at all remarkable about them. (_Enter Sir Mortimer and Mrs. Wrennington_) MRS. W.: So sorry to be late, dear Lady Eaveston. But it is so easy to be on time that I always make it a point to be late. It lends poise, and poise is a charming quality for any woman to have, am I not right, Sir Thomas? SIR T.: You are always right, my dear Mrs. Wrennington, and never more so than now, for I know of no more attractive attribute than poise, unless perhaps it be embarrassment. LADY E.: What horrid cynics you men are! Really, Sir Thomas, one might think, from your sophisticated remarks that you had been brought up in the country and had seen nothing of life. SIR T.: And so I _have_ been, my dear Lady Eaveston. To my mind, London is nothing but the country, and certainly Stropshire is nothing but a metropolis. The difference is, that when one is in town, one lives with others, and when one is in the country, others live with one. And both plans are abominable. MRS. W.: What a horrid combination! I hate horrid combinations; they always turn out to be so extremely pleasant. (_Enter Meadows_) MEADOWS (_announcing_): Sir Roland Pinshamton; Viscount Lemingham; Countess Trotski and Mr. Peters. In announcing these parties I cannot refrain from remarking that it has always been my opinion that a man who intends to get married should either know something or nothing, preferably both.