The Smart Set: Correspondence & Conversations — John Shaqi
The Smart Set: Correspondence & ConversationsFitch, Clyde
General
The Smart Set: Correspondence & Conversations
Fitch, Clyde
Conversation -- Fiction; Imaginary letters; New York (N.Y.) -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
I hope this letter will reach you before you leave Minneapolis. I do
wish you would leave politics alone, if they're going to take you away
like this. Believe me, the country can get along much better without
you than _I_ can! When we are married you have _got_ to give them up.
When we are married, too, and this bore of a divorce of mine is finally
settled, I presume I shall be invited to Mrs. Makeway's parties! I
wasn't asked last night to her big ball!--not that I care. I am sure
that beast of a husband of mine will never be able to prove his nasty
charges against us, and that I shall win the case. Then there'll be no
excuse for Mrs. Makeway and her prudish set, and I promise you they
shall eat "humble pie," if there's any left in the world after all my
dear friends have made me devour. Tom has been making overtures to my
maid through a detective, but Lena is faithful to us, and I've promised
her double any sum they offer her. _When_ my position is all right
again, I shall go in for society in the most extravagant, splendid way
for one long, brilliant, spiteful season, and I shall punish every one
of these women who have snubbed me so terribly. After all, half of them
owe their positions in the world to my family, and with my family to
back me there will be no trouble about my being absolutely reinstated.
My people will back me up, too, for we have never had a scandal up till
now. We have been almost the only family left.
Of course the papers are full of the Makeway ball, and the pictures of
Mrs. Makeway are too deliciously absurd for anything. One looks like
that one of me in the Evening News when I gave my evidence. I really
believe it's the same picture. I hear that she looked rather well with
her famous pearls on (which, between you and me, I believe are false),
and her tiara, which all the out-of-town people go to the opera to see.
But they say she was dressed entirely too young, and showed she thought
her own party a great success. However, what can you expect? She was
nobody; her family are most ordinary people, the kind that are
prominent in some unfashionable church and influential in its
Sunday-school. O, la-la-la-la! She prides herself on having an ancestor
of some sort who fought in the War of Independence--a common soldier, I
suppose, in Washington's army; that's why she has had an office in the
"Daughters of the Revolution." _We_ had several ancestors in the
war--commissioned officers; and they all fought for King George, thank
heaven; and if they had only won my father would have been the third
Lord Banner, probably, if not something better. So hang Mrs. Makeway!
Her daughter is an ugly little creature; she hasn't a single feature
that doesn't go its own way irrespective of the others, and with a
total disregard for the _tout ensemble_ of the poor girl's face. You
know the sort of thing--each feature seems to be minding the other's
business. Her teeth _look_ lovely, but I believe some of them are
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