DeLancey has folded up his explosive hat and Sam has leaned back in a lordly way and beckoned to the usher for another program—by the time all this has transpired, the actors have forgotten their lines, and we have gotten our money's worth out of the evening's entertainment.

The hardships those people inflict on themselves in the sacred cause of correctness are agonizing. It takes something more than nerve to wear a silk hat and Prince Albert down to the Homeburg post-office on Sundays to get the mail—especially with Ad Summers always on hand to spill a large red laugh into his sleeve and say to some friend in a tremendous stage whisper that the darn dude's legs must be bowed or he wouldn't want to hide 'em that way. And as for the carriage proposition, I'm certain that no martyrs have endured more. DeLancey persuaded Hi Nott to buy a real city carriage, and the four have used it faithfully; only the Payleys and Singers live in different edges of town, and by the time Hi has hauled Sam and his sister across town to the Payleys, through Homeburg's April streets, which average a little more depth than width, and has hauled the four down to the theater, there are usually about three breakdowns. I've seen the four of them plodding haughtily home from "Wedded but No Wife", the girls holding their imported dresses out of the mud, and the boys sounding for bottom on the crossings with their canes, while Hi drove the carriage solemnly down the road beside them. The mud was too deep for them to get home in the carriage, but everybody could see it was there and that they had paid for it and had done their darndest, anyway. After all, that's no worse than the way you New Yorkers carry your gloves in your hand in warm weather. You don't need them, but you want the world to know you've got 'em and wouldn't be found dead without 'em.

When our Smart Set gives a party, we all try to live up to it as far as possible, and so we insist on going by carriage. Hi starts hauling us at six o'clock, six to a load in dry weather, and he usually gets the last batch there just in time to begin hauling the first platoon home.

But those are just little troubles for our Smart Set. Your Smart Set has no troubles except the job of spending its money fast enough to keep from being smothered by the month's income. It does what it pleases, and if anybody objects, it raises the price of something or other by way of retort. But our Smart Set has to live in Homeburg, and what is more, it has to live off of Homeburg, which is as hoity-toity a place to live off of as you can find. Sally Singer can't afford to offend any one but the depositors in the Payley Bank, and if DeLancey caused any Homeburger to stalk down to his father's bank and extract a thousand-dollar savings deposit, old man Payley would thrash DeLancey and set him to work on his farm. They have to show their superiority over us so deftly and pleasantly that we don't mind it. They have to keep us good-natured while despising us. With half the genius for contemptuous conciliation that the Payley and Singer children have displayed in the last five years, the French nobility could have kept the peasantry yelling for bread as a privilege long after 1793.

Emma Madigan weighs two hundred pounds and drives a milk route. She went to high school with Sally Singer, and it is the joy of her life to poke her head into the Singer home when Sally has company and yell: "Sall, here's your milk!" But Sally never tries to refrigerate her with the Spitzbergen glare which she uses on us collectively when she goes to the theater. You couldn't possibly refrigerate Emma, but you might encourage her to say more—like the time when Sarah Payley passed her on the street without speaking, being busy treading the upper altitudes with a young Princeton College visitor, and Em yelled back: "For goodness' sakes, Sarey, if you didn't lace so tight you could get your chin down and see some one!"

But most of us are not so frank. We are too good-natured. As a matter of fact, we'd hate to see the Payleys and Singers common. They help to make Homeburg interesting, and so long as they know their place and don't irritate us, we wouldn't hurt their feelings for the world—that is, not much.

There was a dancing school in Homeburg two winters ago, and to the consternation of every one the Payley and Singer young folks joined it. It took two meetings for us to discover what had clogged up the atmosphere and taken the prance out of things. Then we tumbled. The Payleys and Singers were educating us. They were fitting us to live in the rarified upper altitudes of refinement and to mingle with rank without stepping all over its feet. By the third meeting Henry Snyder had caught on to most of the signals and he explained them to a lot of us beforehand with care. When Sally Singer dropped on to a bench and moved her skirt ever so slightly aside it was a sign that the young man with whom she was speaking might sit down and hold sweet converse. And when Sarah Payley smiled brightly at a gentleman from some distance and just caressed the chair beside her with her eye for the millionth part of a second, that young man, if he had a spark of gentility in him, would hurdle the intervening chairs to arrive. We also discovered how to get away just before the young ladies got bored, by other delicate signs, and how to derive the fact that they were thirsty and needed sustenance, and just how to imprison them in our strong but respectful arms during a waltz, and how to collect fans and gloves and programs and handkerchiefs from the floor without grunting or jolting the conversation. It was hard work, and spoiled the evening to a certain extent, but we did the best we could until Jim Reebe spoiled it all in the fourth lesson. Miss Singer had collected her usual six men during the intermission with as many bright glances, and was being admired properly and according to Hoyle, when Jim up and remarks, in his megaphone bass: "Say, Sall, you're a great work of art, but the time you made a hit with me was the day you slid down the banisters at school."

That finished the course; and the Smart Set, being unanimously absent the rest of the winter, we gave ourselves up to vulgar pleasure, stuffed our white gloves back into the bureaus and yelled for encores when we couldn't get them any other way.

I'll tell you, a man could be a hero to his valet with half the exertion which it takes to be a Somebody to an old grammar-school mate in a small town.

Our Smart Set is disintegrating now, and things look blue for social progress in Homeburg. Sally Singer is getting ready to be married this summer to a Pittsburgh man who wears a cane. The remaining three look like the old guard at Waterloo closing in under a heavy fire. Looks to me as if there were going to be some of these mess alliances to wind up with, for Sam Singer is calling on Mabel Andrews in citizen's clothing, she having jeered him out of his Prince Albert; and Henry Snyder has stopped scoffing and infests the Payley house to an alarming extent. So I imagine that our Smart Set will get back to shirtsleeves in two generations less than yours usually requires, and we'll miss it a lot. Next to the ill feeling between the Argus and the Democrat, it has been our greatest diversion.