Just what drives her so hard is a mystery, for beyond a vague charity meeting or two and some calls, she accomplishes little. Although wealthy and childless, with no cares and few worries, she succumbs to nervous prostration every two or three years, “from overwork.” Listen to a compatriot’s account of his European trip! He will certainly tell you how short the ocean crossing was, giving hours and minutes with zest, as though he had got ahead of Father Time in a transaction. Then follows a list of the many countries seen during his tour. I know a lady lying ill to-day because she would hurry herself and her children, in six weeks last summer, through a Continental tour that should have occupied three months. She had no particular reason for hurrying; indeed, she got ahead of her schedule, and had to wait in Paris for the steamer; a detail, however, that in no way diminished madame’s pleasure in having done so much during her holiday. This same lady deplores lack of leisure hours, yet if she finds by her engagement book that there is a free week ahead, she will run to Washington or Lakewood, “for a change,” or organize a party to Florida. To realize how our upper ten scramble through existence, one must also contrast their fidgety way of feeding with the bovine calm in which a German absorbs his nourishment and the hours Italians can pass over their meals; an American dinner party affords us the opportunity. There is an impression that the fashion for quickly served dinners came to us from England. If this is true (which I doubt; it fits too nicely with our temperament to have been imported), we owe H.R.H. a debt of gratitude, for nothing is so tiresome as too many courses needlessly prolonged. Like all converts, however, we are too zealous. From oysters to fruit, dinners now are a breathless steeplechase, during which we take our viand hedges and champagne ditches at a dead run, with conversation pushed at much the same speed. To be silent would be to imply that one was not having a good time, so we rattle and gobble on toward the finger-bowl winning-post, only to find that rest is not there! As the hostess pilots the ladies away to the drawing-room, she whispers to her spouse, “You won’t smoke long, will you?” So we are mulcted in the enjoyment of even that last resource of weary humanity, the cigar, and are hustled away from that and our coffee, only to find that our appearance is a signal for a general move. One of the older ladies rises; the next moment the whole circle, like a flock of frightened birds, are up and off, crowding each other in the hallway, calling for their carriages, and confusing the unfortunate servants, who are trying to help them into their cloaks and overshoes.