A wealthy and cultivated gentleman or two "took up" the street a year or so ago, decided to make their homes there, and it has become quite "class." Same idea, more or less, that Mrs. W. K. Vanderbilt has concerning the "exodus" of her set from Fifth Avenue to unheard-of Sutton Place over among the tall yellow chimneys by New York's East River. Considering the great wealth in Philadelphia and its environs, particularly those patrician environs lying toward Harrisburg, it is, I think, unusual that you never see on the streets there a Pekingese or a Pomeranian attended by a personage in livery. Unusual, too, that in a city of the first class along the eastern seaboard so few canes are "worn." And, by the way, that's an unusual railroad service from Philadelphia to New York. Conductor calls out: "Train for Newark and New York. Newark first stop." Train slides a few feet--halts at West Philadelphia. Spins along a bit again, and pulls up at North Philadelphia. Stops later along the way at Trenton, Newark, and Manhattan Junction. I really do not see, putting a wreck out of the calculation, where else it could stop. I took from a boy in the Pennsylvania station a copy of one of New York's most popular evening papers. It came apart in the middle. Straightening it out, I caught a headline on the "Talks to Women" page. It read "Short Skirts Remain." Below a cut of a beaming lass attired, the caption said, in "frock of navy blue ruffled taffeta with short sleeves and 'shorter' skirt." When I came out onto the street the temperature (in skirts) seemed to have risen since my departure a couple of days before. CHAPTER VIII OUR LAST SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT AS A FINE ART I have just witnessed a revelation. At least, it was a revelation to me. I'm keen on telling you all about it. One of my earlier articles in this series had to do with the establishment here and there in a great city of those gentlemen engaged in the estimable business of packing you up for keeps--that is the "parlors" of various sorts of "undertakers." I had been much struck by the vast number of cozy little places catering, so to say, to the poor and humble who have forever (as Stevenson puts it) "parted company with their aches and ecstasies." And I had wondered at how very few places there were in evidence on the streets to take care of the "remains" of, in a manner of speaking, the first-cabin passengers in life, those who have travelled through their days in a fashion de luxe. The establishments of this type which now and then I did see were very palatial indeed--and didn't look at all as though they would countenance the corpse of just an ordinary person such as you and me.