Then came the period of expansion. My accumulations doubled and trebled. In one year I earned a fee in a railroad reorganization of two hundred thousand dollars. I found myself on Easy Street. I had arrived—achieved my success. During all those years I had devoted myself exclusively to the making of money. Now I simply had to spend it and go through the motions of continuing to work at my profession.
My wife and I became socially ambitious. She gave herself to this end eventually with the same assiduity I had displayed at the law. It is surprising at the present time to recall that it was not always easy to explain the ultimate purpose in view. Alas! What is it now? Is it other than that expressed by my wife on the occasion when our youngest daughter rebelled at having to go to a children's party?
"Why must I go to parties?" she insisted.
"In order," replied her mother, "that you may be invited to other parties."
It was the unconscious epitome of my consort's theory of the whole duty of man.
CHAPTER II
MY FRIENDS
By virtue of my being a successful man my family has an established position in New York society. We are not, to be sure—at least, my wife and I are not—a part of the sacrosanct fifty or sixty who run the show and perform in the big ring; but we are well up in the front of the procession and occasionally do a turn or so in one of the side rings. We give a couple of dinners each week during the season and a ball or two, besides a continuous succession of opera and theater parties.
Our less desirable acquaintances, and those toward whom we have minor social obligations, my wife disposes of by means of an elaborate "at home," where the inadequacies of the orchestra are drowned in the roar of conversation, and which a sufficient number of well-known people are good-natured enough to attend in order to make the others feel that the occasion is really smart and that they are not being trifled with. This method of getting rid of one's shabby friends and their claims is, I am informed, known as "killing them off with a tea."
We have a slaughter of this kind about once in two years. In return for these courtesies we are invited yearly by the élite to some two hundred dinners, about fifty balls and dances, and a large number of miscellaneous entertainments such as musicales, private theatricals, costume affairs, bridge, poker, and gambling parties; as well as in the summer to clambakes—where champagne and terrapin are served by footmen—and other elegant rusticities.