“My dear man,” he said, “it will be an event in your life to meet these distinguished men. Jump in the first train, return to your country home, and get your dress-coat. By all means you must not miss my dinner.” As I knew Lord Frederick Cavendish so well, I really wanted to meet his brothers, and as no one could send me my spike-tail coat as they call it at the South, I took a way train and consumed the entire day getting the necessary outfit, and returning with it to the city. To compensate me for my day’s work, Van Buren put me next to Lord Hartington. Chatting with him, I asked him what he had seen in our habits, manners, and speech that struck him as odd. At first he avoided making any criticism, but finally he laughingly replied, “The way you all have of saying ‘Yes, sir,’ or ‘No, sir.’ We never do this in England; it is used thus only by servants.” James Brady, a great chum of our host’s, being at the dinner, kept up an incessant fire at Van Buren, who retaliated with, “My dear Lord Hartington, pay no attention to what my friend Brady says; all I can say of him is that he is a man who passes one half his time in defending criminals and the other half in assailing patriots, such as myself.” I was well repaid for all the trouble I had taken to attend this dinner. At this time there were not more than one or two men in New York who spent, in living and entertaining, over sixty thousand dollars a year. There were not half a dozen _chefs_ in private families in this city. Compare those days to these, and see how easily one or two men of fortune could then control, lead, and carry on society, receive or shut out people at their pleasure. If distinguished strangers failed to bring letters to them, they were shut out from everything. Again, if, though charming people, others were not in accord with those powers, they could be passed over and left out of society. All this many of us saw, and saw how it worked, and we resolved to band together the respectable element of the city, and by this union make such strength that no individual could withstand us. The motto, we felt, must be _nous nous soutenons_. This motto we then assumed, and we hold it to this day, and have found that the good and wise men of this community could always control society. This they have done and are still doing. Our first step then in carrying out these views was to arrange for a series of “cotillion dinners.”