DINNER IN A RICH HOUSE.

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 312, 26 September 1908, Page 11

DINNER IN A RICH HOUSE.

. This is an extract from "Jack SpurloshProdigal," by G. EL Lorimcr:—l was tho only poor person at the dinner, and tho footman wouldn't have let m'e in if, he hadn't been tipped off that I had expectations. .It ■ was a gathering of the hope-to-get-in and the almost-in-just-rich. Mrs. Storer, standing 011 a forty-thousand dollar rug, under rixty-thousand-dollar nearRaphael, in tho huiidred-thousand-dollar grand salon of her two-million-dollar chateau—by Bill D'Obing out at Mansart— and looking with her hawser of pearls-and her peck of tasty little Kohinoors like tho Queen of tho Amazons leading tho Grand March, : introduced mo to over a billion dollars. First there was Riggs—five hundred million, then Nortiger—two hundred million; and consequently only two-fifths as great and as good a man as Riggs, and receiving from every one present only two-fifths as much deference. Last and least came Jones, a shame-faced, ill-at-ease pauper, with only twenty-five millions, who had to bp deferential to everyone. ■ I made a horrid "faux pas" right at tho start by speaking in a hundred-million-dol-lar tone to a two-hundred-million-dollar man, and was proporly snubbed by him. , I couldn't figuro out wliy I'd been invited, unless they were going to have a small game after dinner and wanted to use me as tho buck. I had just received a fifteen-hundred-dollar sentence from Riggs—his income is a hundred dollars a minute, or a second, I forget which—and was handing back a thirty-cent joko in exchange—when my : hostess spoke.