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ABOUT PEOPLE.

their possessor. Money can buy color and frames; inherited taste alone can hang them. All other signs may fail, but the height of a picture will ever be the true indicator of one's social position. Intellectual entertainment is no test of one's social standing; the lowest and the highest are eager to offer this pièce de résistance. It takes the place of supper, or whets the appetite for something substantial, and is as often the bane as the delight of an evening. People are no longer supposed to possess enough intelligence to talk for two hours at their own sweet will, but the topic must be assigned by the paper, essay, brochure. Even coffee-parties are intellectualized; a kettle-drum, a ball, or a huge reception, remains as the only entertainment incapable of mental improvement. When every one can offer original mental food who shall lead? The coterie in the side street is as large as that on the fashionable avenue. Within the course of a few days a lady went to four lunches, two

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