Page:About people (IA aboutpeople00well).pdf/188
head. It is no more complimentary to one's vanity to be invited to such crowds, merely to be lost in them, than it is to be invited to a family dinner because the hostess does not know exactly whom to ask to meet you.
The naïvete of one's guests is sometimes very amusing. They think one is semi-literary, and that they shall meet such persons, and they come and find real-estate men and wholesale dealers in leather, or they go especially to meet the boot and shoe trade and find an essayist and a historian. They fancy their entertainer is homœopathic, and find both old and new schools present. They consider one as pious, and the Sunday paper tells them that piety has had a dance and an elegant supper. It is considered odd when extremes meet in private houses, though it is taken as a matter of course when they come together on political occasions.
A plain lady living in an unfashionable street invited a gentleman of leisurely life