Year: 1873

OF course that there is enough Of So
ciety in America none would be foolish
enough to deny. The girl who grows up
Agoes OUT" as matter Of course, the
man who reaches the age of sixteen is
very likely to 60 to dancing classes.and
two years later to balls. But there is
imported from Europe, and when you
say "imported from Europe you don't
mean from any one country, but some
customs from England, some from
France, some from Germany, some new
some old some bad, some good, destin-
ed to survive, some to perish. 1t is in
fact with social ideas in this country as
it is with every thing else, intellectual,
moral, and physlcal-except such man.
ufactured products as we think it nee
essary to exclude by atariff-everything
and everybody is allowed to come and
maintain himself, or her self, or itself,if
enough can be found to live on. All
ideas, principles, thoughts, feelings,
processes, and traditions that have ever
made their appearance in the world find
in the United States common field in
which the struggle for existence results
in the survival of the fittests. Nothing
is settled, nothing is fixed. There are
no decisions which are final. There
are no laws or code of the levitical kind.
A general sense of social obligation of
course exists. 1t would be possible for
a gentleman who wished to cut figure
in the society of New York or Boston
to make habit of drawing bead''on
his hostess whenever anything went
wrong in the cotillon, or of picking the
pockets ofhis fellow guests, it would be
out of the question for Il waiter to sit
down to table with the company, or for
the ladies at Il formal dinner party to
remain with the gentlemen after the
hostess had gone into the parlor. With
in these rather broad limits, however,
there is such an amount of freedom as to
render it an impossibility to say where
the true lines are. 1t Is abuse in such a
society as ours to talk of what is allow
ed, what is PERMITTED, what is de riguenr
and what is not. The idea of the nee
essity of social ordinances, and the ma
chinery for their application is derived
from familiarity with fixed states of
society, in which for generations the
means of social amusement have been
concentrated in the same hands. But
we have adopted changes as the basis of
existence,in this as in any other branch
of life. From another point of view the
matter is still clearer. When girl
"comes out" with us, or man begins
to go out the amusement to which they
are chiefly confined is dancing togeth-
er of boys and girls between the ages OF
eighteen and twenty-five which really
constitutes what foreigners hear OF
when they get their inormation about
"Americau Society. After that they
in almost all cases marry and settle
down to work, in the case of the girls
who remain unmarried retire from the
field, reconcile themselves to sin lie
life, or take in the case ola few of the


bolder ones, to some occupation. BuI
meantime new generation has entered
the field. New freshmen and fresh
mems sisters are dancing the German
together, the older set has disappeared.
There are q few OF both sexes who
wearily keep it up for a,few years Ion
ger with much tribulation and difficult
ty, but they are few, and are beginning
to have gloomy thoughts about the
vanity of earthly affairs. They, too will
soon marry or retire. With this kalei-
doscopic movement going on, n,social ex-
istence cannot produce a "Society."-
"Nebulae," in GALAXY for March.