Although there is little or nothing about Mrs. Vere Veneer that connoisseurs would mistake for Vere de Vere, to the casual observer and the Society “outsider” she presents quite an imposing appearance from the social point of view. Whenever she is present at any social function, the “Society papers” duly chronicle the gown she wore, and sometimes even the subject of her conversation as they imagine it to have been. She makes it her business to be seen everywhere, and she spares herself no fatigue. If she gives an “At Home,” eager paragraph-mongers, insidiously invited for the purpose, deluge the editors with elaborate accounts of the party, the decorations, the dresses, and the refreshments. Her public importance is, in fact, the manufacture of the Society Press. But why it should be so is one of those problems which I must leave for discussion till I write my treatise on the “Anatomy of Society.” Then, I believe, I shall be able to satisfactorily prove that nobody is anybody, in a relative sense; but in the meanwhile, of course, everybody is somebody, in a journalistic sense. For instance, the other night I went to Mrs. Vere Veneer’s party at her large and sumptuously appointed house in Cromwell Road, and to-day I read in a descriptive paragraph that “everybody who is anybody was there.” It is a triumphant phrase from the hostess’ point of view; it is a seductive phrase to those whose ambition is social importance, for evidently to be seen at one of Mrs. Vere Veneer’s crushes is to be stamped with personal distinction. Well, certainly till I read this paragraph I had no idea I was “anybody,” nor, to tell the truth, had I any idea that Mrs. Vere Veneer herself—by the way, she was plain Mrs. Veneer in the old days—was anybody in particular. But there is a magic power of transformation in the pens of your Society journalists; they confer their own patent of notoriety. But let me recall the motley assembly of the other night. There was a musical countess of Bohemian predilections, who was a centre of attraction to a number of professional musicians of more or less competence—often less—and an exuberance of manner. There was a funny little actor, who, finding himself for a few minutes unnoticed, skilfully revived attention by some impromptu buffoonery with a bust of a negro in the corner. Then a languid vocalist, who during the evening rapturously whispered his own mystical melodies, was sitting in a corner absorbed in the conversation of an enthusiastic young girl, while many mothers of families, some of them ladies of title, seemed to be jealously watching an opportunity to lure the fascinating singer to themselves. And when one or two of them succeeded, how comic were their fawning attitudes of triumph. [Illustration]