The Birmingham age-herald., 1920-02-22


 and society is one of them.
 It is in vain that the dolngs or society people are chronicled that their goings and comings are followed with the pains taking care the astronomers use in keep | ing track of the planets. They still con tinue to be mysterious to us common peo- pie, because nobody knows how to get at them or to depict them as they really are, and to tell how they really act and l feel. It isn't necessarily because they have money that interests us in them 1 so supremely as it is because through money, they have liberty of choice, or appear to have. This is what fascinase us.
 It is an astonishing an incredible magic fairy-like thing that there should exist a race of people before our eyes who can apparently do anything they pieasS Here is a lady who wishes to marry prince. She looks over those on hand just as we do the list of films for the coming week, selects one she thinks will answer the purpose and moves her retinue toward him with the precision of spider. People in society indeed appear to have lEothing to do but consult their own pleas ure. Society men can acquire new wives al any time merely by writing out a check for their lawyers Society ladies can go anywhere they please they ring q bell, give few orders in refined mono- ftcnes to their social secretaries and there upon transported to the Reveira, to the | Palatine, to Palm Beach or Santat Bar bara, as the case may be. If they wish to build a new residence or acquire n<w 1 camp in the Adirondacks or southern plantation they clap their hands and an architect and a real estate agent float in on them through the ceiling like the Jim of Aladdin's lamp
 l Of course, society people are interesting. 1 And 1t isn't because of the things they actually do or have but2 because we should like to know just how they feel. ! Nothing is more fascinating than the l thought of what you would do if you could do anything you wanted to do. | But there is something more than this, 1 Society people are our only source of supply for manners, and manners are, no doubt supremely important. Society people have leisure to think these things out, and it is, no doubt, worth what we pay them to.do it. If it were not TOT, 1 them we should not know what furs to wear at an afternoon tea; we should keep on saying vest instead of waistcoat; l we should never know when 1t is proper 1 to wear sport suit at a country we'd ding (which it sometimes is, though you may not realize it) or just what you should say to the mother of the girl to whom you were once married, before she became engaged to the brother of the lady who afterwards became your wife before you married the one you have l hand at present. We must know about these things; we cannot know about them unless somebody is practicing them; and l that is what society is for. If there were no society people we would all be eating plain food wearing plain clothes and be living on what we make; that is, l we would all be 50 common and vulgar and low that we wouldn't care whether we were in debt or not. and there wosld be nothing to look forward to.
 Our stock of mysteries is steadily | growing less. The north and south poles have long since withdrawn their | claims to excite the imagination. Sir Oliver Lodge has formally intro 1 duced us to the dead, so that, beyond | the temporary inconvenience of under going the close companionship of some undertaken, hitherto comparative I stranger, we have nothing to look for | ward to in the next life, but the same old sack suits and cigars we had when l here. Statesmanship, diplomacy and the strategy of war have all recently ! had the saw-rust removed from them T and the machinery behind literature | and poetry and free verse have all been exposed by Ibanez. Maeterinck and Amy Lowell So we have only the do- I ings of society people to fall back upon as mystery that out1asts all the others
  l This mystery of society naturally varies according to size and population. l In my own home town am thrilled | and enchanted with the thought that Iit is rumored that our local society leader smokes a cigarette while she has 1 her breakfast in bed; but because New York is bigger than anything else it is inevitable that the mystery of New York society people should be greater than anywhere else.
 The only American writers. who have l reproduced accurately the atmosphere q of American society people, are Henry James and Edith Wharton. Mrs. Whar- ton has stopped and Henry James has departed, so the mystery of New York society is entirely safe in the hands of Robert Chambers.
 At present things in Gotham are only so SO Mrs Panhard Mumble- tumble who. it will be remembered. entertained the Duke of Werstarshire on his recent trip. gave dinner dance last evening in honor of a daughter she has never seen before in three years. Mir Mum ble-Jumble is at Palm Beach with Lady Harcourt Pifflegate, who won the bridge tournament at Clyde on Clyde in the spring of IS. The Twigg trip lest are in town with the Tooter -Toot- CTS. while their Los Angeles and New port places are being re-decorated by Spanaletti, the Italian sculptor and sign painter. Tn Ludington girls were l seen on Fifth avenue yesterday One of them had on new $50 900 sable tip- pet.
 | It is whispered that Hortense Lud- : dington, who won the tennis singles al Tuxedo not so long ago. will surprise everybody soon by doing something startling; she has several friends who are busily engaged afternoons thinking up an idea. Hortense is nothing if not intense in everything she undertakes. While wintering not so long ago in Egypt, she jumped into the Nile one day with all her clothes on. The story of her spectacular rescue by young Willis ing along the Nile at that moment in his car. will be recalled as one of the events of the year. The Luddingtons are replated by marriage with His Grace, the Duke of Scrappleton. who was reported favorably for prime min ister by Queen Victoria in the sos. Hor- tense still rides to hounds in Virginia every year. in memory of this occa- sion. Her father, Obediah Luddington,
 1t is not generally known enee lived ip Kansas but later his extended resi- dence in London removed all traces of his former indiscretion. He has just bought seats in the stock exchange for his two boys. Harold and Phillingsby I.nddington, respectively
 But in case anything serious hap pens, I will either wire. phone or drop you postal card, so please don't worry.
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