have enjoyed at the Dancing Class or any evening party. I realise as I write that in the details of Philadelphia's social history I would come out badly from too rigid an examination.
V
To Mrs. Connor's I was never asked with or without the crowd. But other houses were opened to me, other invitations came, for, if I had not friends, my family had. My white tarlatan and my Second Street silk had grown shabby before the winter was half over. At many parties I got to know what a delightful thing a Philadelphia party was, and if I had gone to one instead of many I should have known as well. Philadelphia had a standard for its parties as for everything, and to deviate from this standard, to attempt originality, to invent the "freak" entertainments of New York, would have been excessively bad form. The same card printed by Dreka requested the pleasure of your company to the same Philadelphia house—the Philadelphia hostess would not have stooped to invite you to the Continental or the Girard, the LaPierre House or the Colonnade, which were the Bellevue and the Ritz of my day—where you danced in the same spacious front and back parlours, with the same crash on the floor, to the same music by Hassler's band; where you ate the same Terrapin, Croquettes, Chicken Salad, Oysters, Boned Turkey, Ice-cream, little round Cakes with white icing on top, and drank the same Fish-House Punch provided by the same Augustine; where the same Cotillon began at
