Chapter 3 - Page 2

often wear this costume in the morning--why I could not learn, though I imagine they think it is more dignified than the sack. With the afternoon suit goes a high silk hat, called a "plug" by the lower classes, who never wear them. After dark two suits of black are worn: one a sack, being informal, the other with tails, very formal. They also have a suit for the bath--a robe--and a sleeping-costume, like a huge bag, with sleeves and neck-hole. This is the night-shirt, and formerly a "nightcap" was used by some. There is also a hat to go with the evening costume--a high hat, which crushes in. You may sit on it without injury to yourself or hat. I know this by a harrowing experience.

Many of the customs of the Americans are strange. Their social life consists of dinners, receptions, balls, card-parties, teas, and smokers. At all but the last women are present. At the dinner every one is in evening dress; the men wear black swallowtail coats, following the English in every way, low white vest, white starched shirt, white collar and necktie, and black trousers. If the dinner does not include women the coat-tails are eliminated, and the vest and necktie are black. Exactly why this is I do not understand, nor do the Americans. The dinner is begun with the national drink, the "cocktail"; then follow oysters on the half-shell, which you eat with an object resembling the trident carried in the ceremony of Ah Dieu at the Triennial. Each course of the dinner is accompanied by a different wine, an agreeable but exhilarating custom. The knife and fork are used, the latter to go into the mouth, the former not, and here you see a singular ethnologic feature. Class distinctions may at times be recognized by the knife or fork. Thus I was informed that you could at once recognize a person of the gentleman class by his use of the knife and fork. "This is infallible," said my young lady companion. If he is a commoner, he eats with his knife; if a gentleman, with his fork. This was a very nice distinction, and I looked carefully for a knife eater, but never saw one.

There is a vast amount of ceremony and etiquette about a dinner and various rules for eating, to break which is a social offense. I heard that a certain Madam ---- gave lessons in "good form" after the American fashion, so that one could learn what was expected, and at my first dinner I regretted that I had not availed myself of the services of the lady, as at each plate there were nearly a dozen solid silver articles to be used in the different courses, but I endeavored to escape by watching my companion and following her example. But here the impossibility of an American girl resisting a joke caused my downfall. She at once saw my dilemma, and would take up the wrong implement, and when I followed suit she dropped it and took another, laughing in her eyes in a way in which the American girl is a prodigious adept; but completely