The country in general believes, I am sure, that a dinner party here is merely a euphonious term for a debauch--but, of course, you know as well as I do that a Newport dinner resembles precisely a similar festivity everywhere else in the world where there is great wealth and the strange state of mind known as “fashion.” Here there is sometimes--often, perhaps,--rather too much pomp and circumstance, more servants and American beauties and jewels than the particular occasion justifies. In Europe I have dined at great embassies in the company of famous and important personages, with far less fuss, feathers and war paint than I have been accustomed to during the past month, when I would dine, for instance, with a man whose father had amassed millions from ready-made clothing, and whose party consisted of a few of his equally unimportant acquaintances. The whole thing (given the kind of thing) is, without question, very perfectly and beautifully done; but equally without question it is, most of the time, very much overdone. It has so often occurred to me as I made myself agreeable to the skinny, be-powdered nakedness of the lady next to me (maybe you don’t know it, but I have a reputation for an ability to amuse any woman who has passed the age of sixty-five, and I, therefore, always take in someone who looks like the galvanized remains of Rameses II), that there was no real, no justifiable reason for so much formality and splendor. There really isn’t, you know. It is not at all as it is in England, for example, where political ambitions must be furthered and the prestige of great and ancient names maintained. Here there are widely known names (that of my last night’s hostess may be seen over the entrance of a large and bad hotel), but they are neither great nor what one is accustomed to consider ancient; and as for politics, when politics become necessary to these people, they merely, and with a light heart, hire a United States senator to do whatever dirty work the situation demands. Splendor here is indulged in purely for its own sake. There is absolutely nothing behind it except unlimited means.