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CASTE IN AMERICAN SOCIETY.
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pass a pleasant, social evening at her residence, and ghastly poems are recited, and original songs, on crumpled paper drawn from waistcoat pockets, are sung. The wholesale merchant takes the retail trader to dinner at a hotel, not to his club or to his house. At a reception of "choice friends," loose, disjointed kid gloves encase long, lank fingers, which give lingering pressure on introduction, as a deep voice asks, "Where do you belong?" or, "What are you doing for society or the world?" or, "Have you a calling?" If one could be sure that annual revenues would never fail one would like to exclaim: "I do nothing, am nobody, and aspire to nothing! I live on my estate." A widower says: "Since my wife's death I am endeavoring to maintain her social reunions. Will you come and read?" and you go, — and find the pictures near the ceiling. The height at which pictures are hung establishes, in the eyes of the social connoisseur, the society standing of

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