People of the Whirlpool | Page 5

Ian
represents the Old, primitive and direct, the "sword of the Lord and
Gideon" type, while Richard is the New, the reconciler and
peacemaker.
* * * * *
The various congratulations that the twins were boys, from my
standpoint I took as a matter of course, even though I had always heard
that boys gave the most worry and girls were referred to among our
friends and neighbours as the greatest comforts in a home unless they
did something decidedly unusual, fitting into nooks, and often taking
up and bearing burdens the brothers left behind. But when many people
who had either daughters or nieces of their own, and might be said to
be in that mystic ring called "Society," congratulated me pointedly
about the boys, I began to ponder about the matter mother-wise. Then,
three years ago the New York Colony seized upon the broad acres
along the Bluffs, and dotted two miles with the elaborate stone and
brick houses they call cottages; not for permanent summer homes (the
very rich, the spenders, have no homes), but merely hotels in series.
These, for the spring and fall between seasons and week-end parties
and golfing, men and girls gay in red and green coats, replaced the wild
flowers in the shorn outlying fields. I watched these girls, and,
beginning to understand, wondered if I had grown old before my time,
or if I were too young to comprehend their point of view, for, to their
strange enlightenment I was practically as yet unborn.
Lavinia Dorman says caustically that I really belong with her in the
middle of the last century, and she, born to what father says was really
the best society and privilege of New York life, like his college chum

Martin Cortright, is now swept quite aside by the swirl.
"Yes, dear child," she insists (how different this use of the word sounds
from when the Lady of the Bluffs uses the universal "my dear"
impartially to mistress and maid, shopgirl and guest), "you not only
belong to the last century, but as far back in it as myself, and I am
fifty-five, full measure.
"The new idea among the richer and consequently more privileged
classes is, that girls are to be fitted not only to go out into the world and
shine in different ways unknown to their grandmothers, but to be
superior to home, which of necessity unfits them for a return trip if the
excursion is unsuccessful.
"What with high ideas, high rents, and higher education, the home myth
is speedily following Santa Claus out of female education, and, argue
as one may, New York is the social pace-maker 'East of the Rockies,' as
the free delivery furniture companies advertise. I congratulate you
anew that the twins are boys!"
I laughed to myself over Miss Lavinia's letter; she is always so
deliciously in earnest and so perturbed over any change in the social
ways of her dearly beloved New York, that I'm wondering how she
finds it, on her return after two years or more abroad (she was
becoming agitated before she left), and whether she will ask me down
for another of those quaint little visits, where she so faithfully tours me
through the shops and a few select teas, when, to wind it up, Evan buys
opera box seats so that she may have the satisfaction of having her hair
dressed, wearing her point lace bertha and aigret, and showing us who
is who, and the remainder who are not. For she is well born, intricately
related to the original weavers of the social cobweb, and knows every
one by name and sight; but has found lately, I judge, that this
knowledge unbacked by money is no longer a social power that carries
beyond mixed tea and charity entertainments. Never mind, Lavinia
Dorman is a dear! Ah, if she would only come out here, and return my
many little visits by a long stay, and act as a key to the riddle the
Whirlpool people are to me. But of course she will not; for she frankly
detests the country,--that is, except Newport and Staten Island,--is
wedded even in summer to her trim back-yard that looks like a picture
in a seed catalogue, and, like a faithful spouse, declines to leave it or
Josephus for more than a few days. Josephus is a large, sleek, black cat,

a fence-top sphinx, who sits all day in summer wearing a silver collar,
watching the sparrows and the neighbourhood's wash with impartial
interest, while at night he goes on excursions of his own to a stable
down a crooked street in "Greenwich Village," where they still keep
pigeons. Some day he won't come back!
Yet Martin Cortright, the Bookworm, was a pavement worshipper too,
and he came