THE TRUE SOCIETY AND THE FICTITIOUS.

By Edith Searle Grossman.

What exact meaning to ascribe to tbe term "society" may be a matter open to debate. But there is a certain large agreement as to its use which makes exact definition of little importance. We may ascribe as " society " that class whose main object in life is making a large body of acquaintances and shining among that body. There is a larger, graver, and 'more scientific seme of the word, but in ordinary parlance the fictitious meaning is the current one. " Society," then, is rcade up of those people who toil and spend their lives visiting and receiving each other at balls, dinner parties, garden parties, riding parties, and " parties " of all descriptions, displaying themselves to the best advantage, discussing, and at the best entertaining each other. The goddess of this society is Fashion— a creature of somewhat crazy brain, a form more variable than Proteus', and no feet to stand on, but none the less a goddess hidden in the folds of as many illusions as the veiled prophet, and so relentless to all who will not worship her that the stoutesthearted assailants are humiliated before her. Her "cult" is as well organised as Christianity, She has her ritual and her service.

It is a mistake to suppose that "society" is idle in the sense of being inactive. It is generally in a ferment of activity. " But," outsiders might ask, "what is it doing?" Attending to " social duties," flitting about, humming and buzzing like gauzy insects on a fair summer night. Yet this movement is conducted on the strictest business principle?, vi6its must be "paid" and "returned" purely as an act of barter; feasts themselves must be paid for in kind.

What is to come out of it all 1 A pessimist might speculate whether "society" did not merely afford an easy method of getting through life, and an ingenious device for escaping from all dangers of passion or reflection.* An ordinary spectator might be pardoned for wishing to see some issue out of all this commotion.

"Society" in its fullest perfection can exist only amongst tbose who are absolutely free from bodily or mental toil — free not for intervals of peace or leisure, but for a monotonous routine of self-imposed useless tasks. Yet it is not composed exclusively of them — professional and ' even manual labourers, especially women, pass restlessly from their productive toil to new unproductive exertions, and, incapable of even conceiving the idea of leisDre and quiet contemplation, vibrate feverishly between tbe true and the talse society. Oddly enough, following the frivolous interpretation of the word, they believe themselves to be "in society " only when they are doing nothing at all useful for it. The people they meet in business whom they might really assist, and whose lives they might improve, are not " society "at all. Master or mistress would laugh at hearing of " social duties " to their employes. And yet, if they would but see it, there is no union, no fellowship like that of those who conscientiously work together side by side, day after day, without affectation of smoothness. Might not those by whose daily toil the community is fed end clothed, or taughb and guided, be more really " in society " than those whose labour ends in nothing? Let there be social amusements, but let them be relaxations, not new burdens. Get clear of the ridiculous notion of compulsion. Let there be something more solid than fictitious tasks — more hedthful than the strain after amusements whose excess leaves only ennui and nervous debility. To be fair one must admit au attraction in unreality. Eeadera of Amiel will remember that exquisite writer calling society an "improvised work of art." "Anxiety, need, passion," he says, " have no existence ; what we call society proceeds for the moment on tbe flittering, illusory assumption that it is moving in an ethereal atmosphere and breathing the air of the gods." _ Yet even in tbis passage we find tbe loveliness less in tho actual scene than in the radiance emanating from the gentle spirit who passed through it. Nor can puch a description apply to the inferior imitations of an inartistic and unliterary society that ha 3 not the courage to be frankly itself, nor tho leisure, opulence, and culture to be a more glittering unre'ility. Why caiuiul. the arti&an ami mechanic at leafet be saved from kiss imitations of feebler

classes? Why cannot they throw over fashion and know that even the so-called "best society" is only a frivolous fiction, more prone to hidden vices, more removed from the actualities of life, thought, passion, and religion than their own society ? It is the folly of imitation that eats away the strength of those who should be the soundest part of the community. There is a noblor society open to workers than to the most artistic idlers— the society of friends and comrades, fellow-servants to humanity and to their God.