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Old-fashioned New York dined at seven, and the habit of after-dinner calls, though derided in Archer's set, still generally prevailed As the youngthoroughfare was deserted but for a group of carriages standing before the Reggie Chiverses' (where there was a dinner for the Duke), and the occasional figure of an elderly gentle a brownstone doorstep and disappearing into a gas-lit hall
Thus, as Archer crossed Washington Square, he reonets, and turning down the corner of West Tenth Street he saw Mr Skipworth, of his own firs A little farther up Fifth Avenue, Beaufort appeared on his doorstep, darkly projected against a blaze of light, descended to his private brougham, and rolled away to a mysterious and probably unht, and no one was giving a party, so that Beaufort's outing was undoubtedly of a clandestine nature Archer connected it in his ton Avenue in which beribbonedcurtains and flower-boxes had recently appeared, and before whose newly painted door the canary-coloured brougha was frequently seen to wait
Beyond the small and slippery pyramid which composed Mrs Archer's world lay the almost unmapped quarter inhabited by artists, amated with the social structure In spite of odd ways they were said to be, for the most part, quite respectable; but they preferred to keep to theurated a "literary salon"; but it had soon died out owing to the reluctance of the literary to frequent it
Others had made the same attempt, and there was a household of Blenkers--an intense and voluble hters who imitated her--where one met Edwin Booth and Patti and Willianold, and soazine editors and roup felt a certain ti these persons They were odd, they were uncertain, they had things one didn't know about in the background of their lives and minds Literature and art were deeply respected in the Archer set, and Mrs Archer was always at pains to tell her children how reeable and cultivated society had been when it included such figures as Washington Irving, Fitz-Greene Halleck and the poet of "The Culprit Fay" The entleentlein, their appearance, their hair, their intie and the Opera, made any old New York criterion inapplicable to them