Through the Eye of the Needle

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"Do women go much to them?" I asked, choosing this question as a safe
one.

"_Much_!" she screamed. "They don't go at all! They _can't_!
They won't _let_ us! To be sure, there are some that have rooms
where ladies can go with their friends who are members, and have lunch or
dinner; but as for seeing the inside of the club-house proper, where
these great creatures"--she indicated her husband--"are sitting up,
smoking and telling stories, it isn't to be dreamed of."

Her husband laughed. "You wouldn't like the smoking, Dolly."

"Nor the stories, some of them," she retorted.

"Oh, the stories are always first-rate," he said, and he laughed more
than before.

"And they never gossip at the clubs, Mr. Homos--never!" she added.

"Well, hardly ever," said her husband, with an intonation that I did not
understand. It seemed to be some sort of catch-phrase.

"All I know," said Mrs. Makely, "is that I like to have my husband belong
to his club. It's a nice place for him in summer; and very often in
winter, when I'm dull, or going out somewhere that he hates, he can go
down to his club and smoke a cigar, and come home just about the time I
get in, and it's much better than worrying through the evening with a
book. He hates books, poor Dick!" She looked fondly at him, as if this
were one of the greatest merits in the world. "But I confess I shouldn't
like him to be a mere club man, like some of them."

"But how?" I asked.

"Why, belonging to five or six, or more, even; and spending their whole
time at them, when they're not at business."

There was a pause, and Mr. Makely put on an air of modest worth, which he
carried off with his usual wink towards me. I said, finally, "And if the
ladies are not admitted to the men's clubs, why don't they have clubs of
their own?"

"Oh, they have--several, I believe. But who wants to go and meet a lot of
women? You meet enough of them in society, goodness knows. You hardly
meet any one else, especially at afternoon teas. They bore you to death."

Mrs. Makely's nerves seemed to lie in the direction of a prolongation of
this subject, and I asked my next question a little away from it. "I wish
you would tell me, Mrs. Makely, something about your way of provisioning
your household. You said that the grocer's and butcher's man came up to
the kitchen with your supplies--"

"Yes, and the milkman and the iceman; the iceman always puts the ice into
the refrigerator; it's very convenient, and quite like your own house."

"But you go out and select the things yourself the day before, or in the
morning?"

"Oh, not at all! The men come and the cook gives the order; she knows
pretty well what we want on the different days, and I never meddle with
it from one week's end to the other, unless we have friends. The
tradespeople send in their bills at the end of the month, and that's all
there is of it." Her husband gave me one of his queer looks, and she went
on: "When we were younger, and just beginning housekeeping, I used to go
out and order the things myself; I used even to go to the big markets,
and half kill myself trying to get things a little cheaper at one place
and another, and waste more car-fare and lay up more doctor's bills than
it would all come to, ten times over. I used to fret my life out,
remembering the prices; but now, thank goodness, that's all over. I don't
know any more what beef is a pound than my husband does; if a thing isn't
good, I send it straight back, and that puts them on their honor, you
know, and they have to give me the best of everything. The bills average
about the same, from month to month; a little more if we have company
but if they're too outrageous, I make a fuss with the cook, and she
scolds the men, and then it goes better for a while. Still, it's a great
bother."

I confess that I did not see what the bother was, but I had not the
courage to ask, for I had already conceived a wholesome dread of the
mystery of an American lady's nerves. So I merely suggested, "And that is
the way that people usually manage?"

"Why," she said, "I suppose that some old-fashioned people still do their
marketing, and people that have to look to their outgoes, and know what
every mouthful costs them. But their lives are not worth having. Eveleth
Strange does it--or she did do it when she was in the country; I dare say
she won't when she gets back--just from a sense of duty, and because she
says that a housekeeper ought to know about her expenses. But I ask her
who will care whether she knows or not; and as for giving the money to
the poor that she saves by spending economically, I tell her that the
butchers and the grocers have to live, too, as well as the poor, and so
it's as broad as it's long."

XI

I could not make out whether Mr. Makely approved of his wife's philosophy
or not; I do not believe he thought much about it. The money probably
came easily with him, and he let it go easily, as an American likes to
do. There is nothing penurious or sordid about this curious people, so
fierce in the pursuit of riches. When these are once gained, they seem to
have no value to the man who has won them, and he has generally no object
in life but to see his womankind spend them.

This is the season of the famous Thanksgiving, which has now become the
national holiday, but has no longer any savor in it of the grim
Puritanism it sprang from. It is now appointed by the president and the
governors of the several states, in proclamations enjoining a pious
gratitude upon the people for their continued prosperity as a nation, and
a public acknowledgment of the divine blessings. The blessings are
supposed to be of the material sort, grouped in the popular imagination
as good times, and it is hard to see what they are when hordes of men and
women of every occupation are feeling the pinch of poverty in their
different degrees. It is not merely those who have always the wolf at
their doors who are now suffering, but those whom the wolf never
threatened before; those who amuse as well as those who serve the rich
are alike anxious and fearful, where they are not already in actual want;
thousands of poor players, as well as hundreds of thousands of poor
laborers, are out of employment, and the winter threatens to be one of
dire misery. Yet you would not imagine from the smiling face of things,
as you would see it in the better parts of this great city, that there
was a heavy heart or an empty stomach anywhere below it. In fact, people
here are so used to seeing other people in want that it no longer affects
them as reality; it is merely dramatic, or hardly so lifelike as that--it
is merely histrionic. It is rendered still more spectacular to the
imaginations of the fortunate by the melodrama of charity they are
invited to take part in by endless appeals, and their fancy is flattered
by the notion that they are curing the distress they are only slightly
relieving by a gift from their superfluity. The charity, of course, is
better than nothing, but it is a fleeting mockery of the trouble, at the
best. If it were proposed that the city should subsidize a theatre a
which the idle players could get employment in producing good plays at a
moderate cost to the people, the notion would not be considered more
ridiculous than that of founding municipal works for the different sorts
of idle workers; and it would not be thought half so nefarious, for the
proposition to give work by the collectivity is supposed to be in
contravention of the sacred principle of monopolistic competition so
dear to the American economist, and it would be denounced as an
approximation to the surrender of the city to anarchism and destruction
by dynamite.

But as I have so often said, the American life is in no wise logical, and
you will not be surprised, though you may be shocked or amused, to learn
that the festival of Thanksgiving is now so generally devoted to
witnessing a game of football between the elevens of two great
universities that the services at the churches are very scantily
attended. The Americans are practical, if they are not logical, and this
preference of football to prayer and praise on Thanksgiving-day has gone
so far that now a principal church in the city holds its services on
Thanksgiving-eve, so that the worshippers may not be tempted to keep away
from their favorite game.

There is always a heavy dinner at home after the game, to console the
friends of those who have lost and to heighten the joy of the winning
side, among the comfortable people. The poor recognize the day largely
as a sort of carnival. They go about in masquerade on the eastern
avenues, and the children of the foreign races who populate that quarter
penetrate the better streets, blowing horns and begging of the passers.
They have probably no more sense of its difference from the old carnival
of Catholic Europe than from the still older Saturnalia of pagan times.
Perhaps you will say that a masquerade is no more pagan than a football
game; and I confess that I have a pleasure in that innocent
misapprehension of the holiday on the East Side. I am not more censorious
of it than I am of the displays of festival cheer at the provision-stores
or green-groceries throughout the city at this time. They are almost as
numerous on the avenues as the drinking-saloons, and, thanks to them, the
tasteful housekeeping is at least convenient in a high degree. The waste
is inevitable with the system of separate kitchens, and it is not in
provisions alone, but in labor and in time, a hundred cooks doing the
work of one; but the Americans have no conception of our co-operative
housekeeping, and so the folly goes on.

Meantime the provision-stores add much to their effect of crazy gayety on
the avenues. The variety and harmony of colors is very great, and this
morning I stood so long admiring the arrangement in one of them that I am
afraid I rendered myself a little suspicious to the policeman guarding
the liquor-store on the nearest corner; there seems always to be a
policeman assigned to this duty. The display was on either side of the
provisioner's door, and began, on one hand, with a basal line of pumpkins
well out on the sidewalk. Then it was built up with the soft white and
cool green of cauliflowers and open boxes of red and white grapes, to the
window that flourished in banks of celery and rosy apples. On the other
side, gray-green squashes formed the foundation, and the wall was sloped
upward with the delicious salads you can find here, the dark red of
beets, the yellow of carrots, and the blue of cabbages. The association
of colors was very artistic, and even the line of mutton carcasses
overhead, with each a brace of grouse or half a dozen quail in its
embrace, and flanked with long sides of beef at the four ends of the
line, was picturesque, though the sight of the carnage at the
provision-stores here would always be dreadful to an Altrurian; in the
great markets it is intolerable. This sort of business is mostly in the
hands of the Germans, who have a good eye for such effects as may be
studied in it; but the fruiterers are nearly all Italians, and their
stalls are charming. I always like, too, the cheeriness of the chestnut
and peanut ovens of the Italians; the pleasant smell and friendly smoke
that rise from them suggest a simple and homelike life which there are so
any things in this great, weary, heedless city to make one forget.

XII

But I am allowing myself to wander too far from Mrs. Makely and her
letter, which reached me only two days before Thanksgiving.

"MY DEAR MR. HOMOS,--Will you give me the pleasure of your company at
dinner, on Thanksgiving-day, at eight o'clock, very informally. My
friend, Mrs. Bellington Strange, has unexpectedly returned from Europe
within the week, and I am asking a few friends, whom I can trust to
excuse this very short notice, to meet her.

With Mr. Makely's best regards,
Yours cordially,
DOROTHEA MAKELY.

The Sphinx,
November the twenty sixth,
Eighteen hundred and
Ninety-three."

I must tell you that it has been a fad with the ladies here to spell out
their dates, and, though the fashion is waning, Mrs. Makely is a woman
who would remain in such an absurdity among the very last. I will let you
make your own conclusions concerning this, for though, as an Altrurian, I
cannot respect her, I like her so much, and have so often enjoyed her
generous hospitality, that I cannot bring myself to criticise her except
by the implication of the facts. She is anomalous, but, to our way of
thinking, all the Americans I have met are anomalous, and she has the
merits that you would not logically attribute to her character. Of
course, I cannot feel that her evident regard for me is the least of
these, though I like to think that it is founded on more reason than the
rest.

I have by this time become far too well versed in the polite
insincerities of the plutocratic world to imagine that, because she asked
me to come to her dinner very informally, I was not to come in all the
state I could put into my dress. You know what the evening dress of men
is here, from the costumes in our museum, and you can well believe that I
never put on those ridiculous black trousers without a sense of their
grotesqueness--that scrap of waistcoat reduced to a mere rim, so as to
show the whole white breadth of the starched shirt-bosom, and that coat
chopped away till it seems nothing but tails and lapels. It is true that
I might go out to dinner in our national costume; in fact, Mrs. Makely
has often begged me to wear it, for she says the Chinese wear theirs; but
I have not cared to make the sensation which I must if I wore it; my
outlandish views of life and my frank study of their customs signalize me
quite sufficiently among the Americans.

At the hour named I appeared in Mrs. Makely's drawing-room in all the
formality that I knew her invitation, to come very informally, really
meant. I found myself the first, as I nearly always do, but I had only
time for a word or two with my hostess before the others began to come.
She hastily explained that as soon as she knew Mrs. Strange was in New
York she had despatched a note telling her that I was still here; and
that as she could not get settled in time to dine at home, she must come
and take Thanksgiving dinner with her. "She will have to go out with Mr.
Makely; but I am going to put you next to her at table, for I want you
both to have a good time. But don't you forget that you are going to take
_me_ out."

I said that I should certainly not forget it, and I showed her the
envelope with my name on the outside, and hers on a card inside, which
the serving-man at the door had given me in the hall, as the first token
that the dinner was to be unceremonious.

She laughed, and said: "I've had the luck to pick up two or three other
agreeable people that I know will be glad to meet you. Usually it's such
a scratch lot at Thanksgiving, for everybody dines at home that can, and
you have to trust to the highways and the byways for your guests, if you
give a dinner. But I did want to bring Mrs. Strange and you together, and
so I chanced it. Of course, it's a sent-in dinner, as you must have
inferred from the man at the door; I've given my servants a holiday, and
had Claret's people do the whole thing. It's as broad as it's long, and,
as my husband says, you might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb; and
it saves bother. Everybody will know it's sent in, so that nobody will be
deceived. There'll be a turkey in it somewhere, and cranberry sauce; I've
insisted on that; but it won't be a regular American Thanksgiving dinner,
and I'm rather sorry, on your account, for I wanted you to see one, and I
meant to have had you here, just with ourselves; but Eveleth Strange's
coming back put a new face on things, and so I've gone in for this
affair, which isn't at all what you would like. That's the reason I tell
you at once it's sent in."

XIII

I am so often at a loss for the connection in Mrs. Makely's ideas that I
am more patient with her incoherent jargon than you will be, I am afraid.
It went on to much the effect that I have tried to report until the
moment she took the hand of the guest who came next. They arrived, until
there were eight of us in all, Mrs. Strange coming last, with excuses for
being late. I had somehow figured her as a person rather mystical and
recluse in appearance, perhaps on account of her name, and I had imagined
her tall and superb. But she was, really, rather small, though not below
the woman's average, and she had a face more round than otherwise, with a
sort of business-like earnestness, but a very charming smile, and
presently, as I saw, an American sense of humor. She had brown hair and
gray eyes, and teeth not too regular to be monotonous; her mouth was very
sweet, whether she laughed or sat gravely silent. She at once affected me
like a person who had been sobered beyond her nature by responsibilities,
and had steadily strengthened under the experiences of life. She was
dressed with a sort of personal taste, in a rich gown of black lace,
which came up to her throat; and she did not subject me to that
embarrassment I always feel in the presence of a lady who is much
decolletee, when I sit next her or face to face with her: I cannot always
look at her without a sense of taking an immodest advantage. Sometimes I
find a kind of pathos in this sacrifice of fashion, which affects me as
if the poor lady were wearing that sort of gown because she thought she
really ought, and then I keep my eyes firmly on hers, or avert them
altogether; but there are other cases which have not this appealing
quality. Yet in the very worst of the cases it would be a mistake to
suppose that there was a display personally meant of the display
personally made. Even then it would be found that the gown was worn so
because the dressmaker had made it so, and, whether she had made it
in this country or in Europe, that she had made it in compliance with a
European custom. In fact, all the society customs of the Americans follow
some European original, and usually some English original; and it is only
fair to say that in this particular custom they do not go to the English
extreme.

We did not go out to dinner at Mrs. Makely's by the rules of English
precedence, because there are nominally no ranks here, and we could not;
but I am sure it will not be long before the Americans will begin playing
at precedence just as they now play at the other forms of aristocratic
society. For the present, however, there was nothing for us to do but to
proceed, when dinner was served, in such order as offered itself, after
Mr. Makely gave his arm to Mrs. Strange; though, of course, the white
shoulders of the other ladies went gleaming out before the white
shoulders of Mrs. Makely shone beside my black ones. I have now become so
used to these observances that they no longer affect me as they once did,
and as I suppose my account of them must affect you, painfully,
comically. But I have always the sense of having a part in amateur
theatricals, and I do not see how the Americans can fail to have the same
sense, for there is nothing spontaneous in them, and nothing that has
grown even dramatically out of their own life.

Often when I admire the perfection of the stage-setting, it is with a
vague feeling that I am derelict in not offering it an explicit applause.
In fact, this is permitted in some sort and measure, as now when we sat
down at Mrs. Makely's exquisite table, and the ladies frankly recognized
her touch in it. One of them found a phrase for it at once, and
pronounced it a symphony in chrysanthemums; for the color and the
character of these flowers played through all the appointments of the
table, and rose to a magnificent finale in the vast group in the middle
of the board, infinite in their caprices of tint and design. Another lady
said that it was a dream, and then Mrs. Makely said, "No, a memory," and
confessed that she had studied the effect from her recollection of some
tables at a chrysanthemum show held here year before last, which seemed
failures because they were so simply and crudely adapted in the china and
napery to merely one kind and color of the flower.

"Then," she added, "I wanted to do something very chrysanthemummy,
because it seems to me the Thanksgiving flower, and belongs to
Thanksgiving quite as much as holly belongs to Christmas."

Everybody applauded her intention, and they hungrily fell to upon the
excellent oysters, with her warning that we had better make the most of
everything in its turn, for she had conformed her dinner to the brevity
of the notice she had given her guests.

XIV

Just what the dinner was I will try to tell you, for I think that it will
interest you to know what people here think a very simple dinner. That
is, people of any degree of fashion; for the unfashionable Americans, who
are innumerably in the majority, have, no more than the Altrurians, seen
such a dinner as Mrs. Makely's. This sort generally sit down to a single
dish of meat, with two or three vegetables, and they drink tea or coffee,
or water only, with their dinner. Even when they have company, as they
say, the things are all put on the table at once; and the average of
Americans who have seen a dinner served in courses, after the Russian
manner, invariable in the fine world here, is not greater than those who
have seen a serving-man in livery. Among these the host piles up his
guest's plate with meat and vegetables, and it is passed from hand to
hand till it reaches him; his drink arrives from the hostess by the same
means. One maid serves the table in a better class, and two maids in a
class still better; it is only when you reach people of very decided form
that you find a man in a black coat behind your chair; Mrs. Makely,
mindful of the informality of her dinner in everything, had two men.

I should say the difference between the Altrurians and the unfashionable
Americans, in view of such a dinner as she gave us, would be that, while
it would seem to us abominable for its extravagance, and revolting in its
appeals to appetite, it would seem to most of such Americans altogether
admirable and enviable, and would appeal to their ambition to give such a
dinner themselves as soon as ever they could.

Well, with our oysters we had a delicate French wine, though I am told
that formerly Spanish wines were served. A delicious soup followed the
oysters, and then we had fish with sliced cucumbers dressed with oil and
vinegar, like a salad; and I suppose you will ask what we could possibly
have eaten more. But this was only the beginning, and next there came a
course of sweetbreads with green peas. With this the champagne began at
once to flow, for Mrs. Makely was nothing if not original, and she had
champagne very promptly. One of the gentlemen praised her for it, and
said you could not have it too soon, and he had secretly hoped it would
have begun with the oysters. Next, we had a remove--a tenderloin of beef,
with mushrooms, fresh, and not of the canned sort which it is usually
accompanied with. This fact won our hostess more compliments from the
gentlemen, which could not have gratified her more if she had dressed and
cooked the dish herself. She insisted upon our trying the stewed
terrapin, for, if it did come in a little by the neck and shoulders, it
was still in place at a Thanksgiving dinner, because it was so American;
and the stuffed peppers, which, if they were not American, were at least
Mexican, and originated in the kitchen of a sister republic. There were
one or two other side-dishes, and, with all, the burgundy began to be
poured out.

Mr. Makely said that claret all came now from California, no matter what
French chateau they named it after, but burgundy you could not err in.
His guests were now drinking the different wines, and to much the same
effect, I should think, as if they had mixed them all in one cup; though
I ought to say that several of the ladies took no wine, and kept me in
countenance after the first taste I was obliged to take of each, in order
to pacify my host.

You must know that all the time there were plates of radishes, olives,
celery, and roasted almonds set about that every one ate of without much
reference to the courses. The talking and the feasting were at their
height, but there was a little flagging of the appetite, perhaps, when it
received the stimulus of a water-ice flavored with rum. After eating it I
immediately experienced an extraordinary revival of my hunger (I am
ashamed to confess that I was gorging myself like the rest), but I
quailed inwardly when one of the men-servants set down before Mr. Makely
a roast turkey that looked as large as an ostrich. It was received with
cries of joy, and one of the gentlemen said, "Ah, Mrs. Makely, I was
waiting to see how you would interpolate the turkey, but you never fail.
I knew you would get it in somewhere. But where," he added, in a
burlesque whisper, behind his hand, "are the--"

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