“Yes, I guess it is. I thought for a while it was Tuesday.”
“Oh, I don’t believe it’s Tuesday.”
“No, I guess it’s Wednesday, all right. That telegram ought to be here by now. How long are you staying here?”
“I don’t know. I’m expecting a telegram and I can’t tell till it gets here.”
Having reached a comparatively ripe intimacy by this time, it is almost inevitable that one of them should advance one of the thousand statistical questions that are so frequently encountered at Palm Beach, such as “Did you ever stop to think how many nails it took to build this hotel?” A few seconds later both of them have produced envelopes and are figuring busily.
Men who have traveled thousands of miles for the purpose of killing time at Palm Beach will frequently argue for two or three hours, and figure all over the backs of eight or ten envelopes and a couple of golf scores in an attempt to decide whether or not the value of all the diamond bracelets in Palm Beach would be sufficient to secure economic control of Russia. Newcomers to Palm Beach, knowing that America’s greatest financiers flock there during the season, frequently make the mistake of thinking that two men knitting their brows over a lot of figures are probably two great money-kings working up a scheme to corner the nation’s hop crop. In reality they are two ordinary citizens killing a little time by choking it to death with useless statistics.
CHAPTER VI
OF THE CHANGING OF CLOTHES—OF THE WAY THEY WEAR ’EM—AND OF THE FEMALES OF THE DRESS-FERRET SPECIES
Compared with the good old days when dresses hooked up the back in such an intricate fashion that one needed blueprints, diagrams and charts in order to hook up a dress properly, there is practically no dress-changing at Palm Beach nowadays. In the old days the womenfolk spent at least forty per cent. of their waking hours changing their clothes. They changed their clothes whenever the wind changed. They changed their clothes every time a train came in. They couldn’t eat or go out in a wheel-chair or put on a string of beads or take a drink without changing their clothes. Their menfolk were kept constantly busy hooking them up the back.
To-day things are different. Dresses no longer hook up the back with their erstwhile whole-heartedness. Careful and competent observers state that many present-day dresses are safely attached to the human frame by as few as three hooks, all of which can be reached without dislocating an arm or displacing any vertebrae, and that an equal number of dresses are merely slid on over the head and worn just as they fall, without any further formality. A great many women at Palm Beach wear only two costumes each day—one for morning and afternoon that shows almost everything below the hips and one for evening that shows almost everything above the waist.