Page:About people (IA aboutpeople00well).pdf/192
dismiss her three-minute chevalier with a knowing glance. There is as much fault to be found with grateful girls as with rude men; but the girls are grateful from humility and the men rude from selfishness.
The law of supply and demand obtains in society as well as in trade. If one is a wall-flower by necessity of her nature she cannot win the laurels of belleship; but if she is refused them because her father is neither the president of a bank nor a professional man the withholding of them is contemptible. A belle, in full possession of her faculties, can hold her court wherever she may be, in spite of inheritances of quack medicines, patents on domestic inventions, and Bonanza mines, except in the charmed circle of first families. Maryland has its Eastern Shore, Philadelphia its Walnut street, New York its Fifth avenue, and Boston the small radius on the north side of Commonwealth avenue, and the northern end of its first four or five streets crossing the