The mistake made by the world at large is that fashionable people are selfish, frivolous, and indifferent to the welfare of their fellow-creatures; all of which is a popular error, arising simply from a want of knowledge of the true state of things. The elegancies of fashionable life nourish and benefit art and artists; they cause the expenditure of money and its distribution; and they really prevent our people and country from settling down into a humdrum rut and becoming merely a money-making and money-saving people, with nothing to brighten up and enliven life; they foster all the fine arts; but for fashion what would become of them? They bring to the front merit of every kind; seek it in the remotest corners, where it modestly shrinks from observation, and force it into notice; adorn their houses with works of art, and themselves with all the taste and novelty they can find in any quarter of the globe, calling forth talent and ingenuity. Fashionable people cultivate and refine themselves, for fashion demands this of them. Progress is fashion’s watchword; it never stands still; it always advances, it values and appreciates beauty in woman and talent and genius in man. It is certainly always most charitable; it surrounds itself with the elegancies of life; it soars, it never crawls. I know the general belief is that all fashionable people are hollow and heartless. My experience is quite the contrary. I have found as warm, sympathetic, loving hearts in the garb of fashion as out of it. A thorough acquaintance with the world enables them to distinguish the wheat from the chaff, so that all the good work they do is done with knowledge and effect. The world could not dispense with it. Fashion selects its own votaries. You will see certain members of a family born to it, as it were, others of the same family with none of its attributes. You can give no explanation of this; “One is taken, the other left.” Such and such a man or woman are cited as having been always fashionable. The talent of and for society develops itself just as does the talent for art. COTILLIONS IN DOORS AND OUT. CHAPTER XIII. _Cost of Cotillion Dinners--My delicate Position--The Début of a Beautiful Blonde--Lord Roseberry’s mot--We have better Madeira than England--I am dubbed “The Autocrat of Drawing-rooms”--A Grand Domino Ball--Cruel Trick of a fair Mask--An English Lady’s Maid takes a Bath--The first Cotillion Dinners given at Newport--Out-of-Door Feasting--Dancing in the Barn._