OUR SOCIAL CITY LIFE—WHITHER DRIFTING.
THERE never was a time in the history of this city when extravagance was carried to such a dizzy hight as now. Not in dress alone, but in houses, in carriages, in horses, in entertainments, in balls, in parties, in every way in which money can be expended, it is poured out like water. The result is dress without taste, houses without happiness, and social intercourse without enjoyment. The extravagance of the women is saddening to contemplate. Exorbitant prices are asked and given cheerfully for dress, while diamonds and jewelry cost a fortune. Some of our fashionable belles have their dresses exported ready made from Paris, copied exactly in their minutest details from the court costumes of the Empress Eugenie and the court ladies. We have our court journals, too, in which all the fashionable chit-chat of the day is retailed, marriages are announced by authority, and elopements duly chronicled, the proportion of both announcements being about equal. Then we have "Court Quadrilles" at the houses of our Republican aristocracy, and in "point of fact," as Cousin Feenix would say, having reached the minimum in morals and the maximum in wealth, we are ripe for the introduction of every folly and every absurdity. To cap the climax, our fashionable brides have determined to "inaugurate" the system of pages, Utopian quite. Here is a good chance for our "Woman's Rights" women to see to it that boys do not monopolize this now doubtless lucrative branch of industry.—N. Y. Letter.