Mind, I am not saying that this is not the most desirable type of life
in the world; that it is not an almost unreasonably high standard.
For it is really nauseating, when you detest it, to have to eat every
day several slices of thin, tepid, pink india rubber, and it is
disagreeable to have to drink brandy when you would prefer to be
cheered up by warm, sweet K?mmel. And it is nasty to have to
take a cold bath in the morning when what you want is really a hot
one at night. And it stirs a little of the faith of your fathers that is
deep down within you to have to have it taken for granted that you
are an Episcopalian when really you are an old-fashioned
Philadelphia Quaker.
But these things have to be done; it is the cock that the whole of
this society owes to ?sculapius.
And the odd, queer thing is that the whole collection of rules
applies to anybody--to the anybodies that you meet in hotels, in
railway trains, to a less degree, perhaps, in steamers, but even, in
the end, upon steamers. You meet a man or a woman and, from
tiny and intimate sounds, from the slightest of movements, you
know at once whether you are concerned with good people or with
those who won't do.
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