Show UNDER THE CHANDELIER CHAT ABOUT WHAT THEY CALL SASSIETY IN NEW YORK The Village lementXlie Recitation I ManiaStuffy Parlors With Overloaded i Walls Undue ILavishness Mora LIght I Space and Air Wanted Special Correspondence I NEW YORK March 1C I The tiling they call sassiety is a queer institution in-stitution here in New York I you are in the intellectual or Bohemian swim you meet I the same persons everywhere you go exactly a you ould in the village of Jonesville A I few strangers a in every company perhaps meteors of social life who trail down its b dizzened skies once in glory and disappear forever leaving not even a memory of themselves them-selves But for the most part there is a stock te mo pt i stok company com-pany of guests at every house They are the I standard figures on whom hostesses can depend de-pend They get to be little b a ltle heavy to one who likes to see new faces but I lie se fae there is no help for it Receptions differ Reception der but little one from the other As find you fd them one season so are they always Circuses and steamboat excursions are not more alike You may dropout drop-out of the round and rund nobody will miss noby wi m You may stay away a year or two and appear again and nobody will notice your absence You will chat with CoL P and frt with Judge C and flatter Gen E and no one of them will remember that he has not seen you in twenty four moons Set is a headless mindless mind-less soulless thing anywhere thg anyhere you encounter it Yet here are men and women growing old doing nothing but elbowing each other in crowded parlors and calling it pleasure entertainment en-tertainment social success etc It makes every difference about a name you know Call that sort of thing work and no human energy could make it go I know three or four elderly men without any home ties hotel habitues who go call ing every afternoon and to a reception every evening during the season When summer comes they make the rounds of the watering places One told me that this had been his programme for eight years I asked him if it wasnt terribly tiresome Well he said it is all there is for me I have no family no home interests no business affairs nothing noth-ing in particular to do with myself so I mayas may-as well go here there everywhere and mix with people even i there i no particular pleasure in it What a conclusion for a mans life what a sarcasm on society Perhaps I Per-haps twenty others in the same company i could have told a similar tale had they been i as honest as he He was in bis seventies too What a sermon in favor of the natural ties of home This man had been married The ties of his youth and early manhood fell from him and left away Id him in old age a floating drifting hulk belonging nowhere and perhaps only indifferently welcome where he did go Surely life has proved but a poor school to any one who has found no better means passing the end of his days Recitations have been Hecittions bn devastating the parlors par-lors of New York society particularly that part of it mae up of professional people writers artists etc One beautiful and wealthy young lady does comic character sketches in a most inimitable way but quite often the recitations get to b veiy dreary Music like the poor we have always with us That we expect endure and sometimes enjoy in crowded parlors but the recitation is often in the nature of a last straw and breaks down our endurance entirely One lady has devised a new feature and carries it out with inimitable success She tells colored stories humorous chapters of negro life and does it exquisitely She is a writer who has lived south a number of years and acquired an unimpeachable negro dialect Her stories always excite roars of laughter and are great reliefs from the Curfew Cur-few Must Not Ring Tonight or seine other mournful bit of intoleration known as a recitation reci-tation Dont that nobody but brilliant fancy brlant and interesting men and women pervade New York parlors ninnies nondescripts are as plentiful here as anywhere perhaps more so Due evening not long since a youth with a neck like long smelling bottle encased in a collar that admitted of no quarter asked a youiiff lady of strong minded proclivities if I she believed it was weally wight for women to vote Ho said that in his opinion tenderness ten-derness was the thing Women should cultivate I ivate tendern and not strength of mind He hated strong minded women And men too I should judge said the witty girl Ah naw he said affecting an English drawl though he is a native of New Jersey I think nin are purposely endowed with the Drains of tjje race in order to prevent women from becoming coarse and unlovely < And jie was guite in earnest and thought he was saying something sensible There are hundreds hun-dreds of others like him here Stuffiness is the bane of New York houses and private entertainments in New York Parlors are like museums or exhibits of brie a brac and paintings And as for fresh air they exclude it by every artifical device the the upholsterer can think of The windows are covered with three or four lands of curtains and though there may be a hundred arsons in the room the windows are all kept sealed and muffled A stray breath that dared to filter in through a unguarded crevice would b driven back at once by amass a-mass of impure air which would present a I I solid front to it And often not a speck of space on the walls is left uncovered by picture or statuette Tho eye wearies looking at them One picture detracts from another one ornament overwhelms its neighbor Space clear light joyous space so precious In New York is loaded down and peopled with trash All this gives an atmosphere of stuffiness to a room that half stifles one who likes air light and sunshine All these things however beautiful are dead in comparison to light space and sunshine The only place I know where sunshine is welcome and space delighted in and left unfilled file is a eyrie flat occupied by two literary eye ideas women who have strong antistuffy idea Their floors are covered with light matting with a moderate use of Venetian bordering art squares and good rugs Their curtains are mere lambrequins of thin lace trimmed inslin tied with ribbons Then chairs are attan and s are their sofas and very few them Their pictures a few but good The walls a covered with golden paper The whole effect i a summery brightness night or tIny I people only would learn that heavy stuffy house furnishings a as ugly and stfy oppressive to the spirit as they are unhealthful unhealth-ful to the body there might b a revolution in house adornments Japanese rugs of rare silk moth proof and neutral in tone are becoming the fashionable fad in house furnishing now They a xquisite s rich and quiet looking s very ery exalted in taste Lavishness in every particular i the special New York sin not lavishness for the pleasure pleas-ure we feel in possessing and bestowing plenty but the lavishness of show the appearance ap-pearance of luxury I a friend invites you parance enough food for a weeks sustenance If wear or carry flow I is set before you I you cr ers to a reception a bushel basket full at least er is necessary Everything reaches to a extreme ex-treme Simplicity is lost sight ofgone out i tme considered beautiful i of vogue It is still cnsder a Dutul thing ° in poems novels pictures and plays I but in real pms in New ork it has no place save among the very few who are original ver origal independent and sensible enough t like it I and not be ashamed of it Surely it is time I for the doctrines of a Tolstoi to be promulgated promul-gated A return to simplicity i a necessity I if we would reach health beauty and com COlt NAOMI TRENT j |