Page 159 (1/1)

Every year on the fifteenth of October Fifth Avenue opened its shutters, unrolled its carpets and hung up its triple layer of -curtains

By the first of Noveun to look about and take stock of itself By the fifteenth the season was in full blast, Opera and theatres were putting forth their new attractions, dinner-engage fixed And punctually at about this tied

Observing it from the lofty stand-point of a non-participant, she was able, with the help of Mr Sillerton Jackson and Miss Sophy, to trace each new crack in its surface, and all the strange weeds pushing up between the ordered rows of social vegetables It had been one of the amusements of Archer's youth to wait for this annual pronouncens of disintegration that his careless gaze had overlooked For New York, to Mrs Archer'sfor the worse; and in this view Miss Sophy Jackson heartily concurred

Mr Sillerton Jackson, as becament and listened with an amused impartiality to the lamentations of the ladies But even he never denied that New York had changed; and Newland Archer, in the winter of the second year of his ed to ading

These points had been raised, as usual, at Mrs Archer's Thanksgiving dinner At the date when she was officially enjoined to give thanks for the blessings of the year it was her habit to take a h not embittered stock of her world, and wonder what there was to be thankful for At any rate, not the state of society; society, if it could be said to exist, was rather a spectacle on which to call down Biblical imprecations--and in fact, every one knehat the Reverend Dr Ashmore meant when he chose a text fro sermon Dr Ashmore, the new Rector of St Matthew's, had been chosen because he was very "advanced": his sere When he fulainst fashionable society he always spoke of its "trend"; and to Mrs Archer it was terrifying and yet fascinating to feel herself part of a co

"There's no doubt that Dr Ashht: there IS avisible and measurable, like a crack in a house