This was the first appearance of the Pallinder family upon our stage. They had figured brilliantly on a good many others already, as was discovered some two years later, when occurred their exit; San Francisco, Denver, Chicago, Louisville, to say nothing of a score of minor cities knew them, birds of passage. I believe they came from Memphis in the beginning, that is, if they can be said to have come from anywhere, or been native to any place. They were emphatically citizens of the world and called all skies home. I find, upon comparing recollections with friends of those days that the measures by which the Pallinders established themselves in our society are, in that phrase dear to the sedate historian of far weightier matters, shrouded in the mists of--of antiquity, the historian would say. Yet it is only twenty-five years, and no one now remembers, or perhaps took note at the time, exactly how these people who came from everywhere and nowhere, whom nobody knew, got themselves in the space of six months, known, liked, and invited far and wide. I fear that solid unornamental worth such as--let us be frank--yours or mine, would not have accomplished so much in as many years. Mrs. Pallinder must have done a deal of social campaigning in those other centres of enlightenment and culture which I have mentioned, to have become so apt and able; that little slip with Doctor Vardaman was the only one I ever heard recorded against her. She never referred to her life and acquaintance elsewhere, nor traded upon her experiences to advance herself with us; yet she never seemed to be pushing. She built, as it were, from the ground; and I have heard very kind and intelligent persons who were not in the least snobs, comment with astonishment on the headway she contrived to make coming wholly unknown as she did, and handicapped by such a mother. The spectacle of wealth allied to feminine beauty, talent, and virtue, struggling for notice is one with which we are all tolerably familiar.