SOCIAL FICTIONS.

Daily Southern Cross, Volume XXVI, Issue 4061, 27 August 1870, Page 5

SOCIAL FICTIONS.

Mrs. Hunter gives the best parties in tha town. It is coasidered a privilege to be invited to them. Her arrangements are ! perfect. Nothing that good taste can devise jmd imitate,, or mo nay pay for, is omitted. t Aad yet to an observant mind they are melaix«f choly affau?a\ They are r isij>ostures, for they profess to disseminate 'happiness aad gaiety, * whilst in reality they produce discomfort and heart-burning. I saw signs of recent trouble in my hostess's pretty face as I made my bow at her last "hop." Instantly there row before me some of the numerous anxieties of the party -giver. In fancy, I saw the red face, and heard the loud voice of the drunken cook, I read the eleventh-hour excuse from some expected gue3t whose distinguished position in society would give dclat to the entertainment. I sympathised with her anxiety as to how all would "go off," and with the moth -r's reproachful conscience at the thought of the little ones ' stowed away in a remote attic to be out" of i the noise. Miss Wallflower sits bolt upright j against $he wall with her sad, unreal com- ! pany smile, that does not travel higher than ' her mouth. Chills are running down her : back. If she dared, she would stamp her feet to warm them. Why, she wonders, will people give parties in the winter ? She feels her nose is turning red. Acquaintances pass, bow, some speak, but not one invites her to dance. There she sits until the host captures some very young man, or some good-natured old fogy, who is enjoined to ' take her down to supper. And yet she will talk of her enjoyment of Mrs.- Hunter's charmiug party. Look at Miss Quiokst p — young, pretty, and radiantly attired in ■ pink-and- white fluff. How sour she looks. \ oungfet'loss has never once asked her to ' dance, Ilfcd now it is supper time. For him had those charming clouds of drapery been devised. For him had that hair been so carefully.carelessly arranged. And now she will return home in weariness and disgust. Nevertheless, she will tell you next week that she danced every dance, aud enjoyed herself so much at Mrs. Hunter's hop. ! Look at that fair young fellow with long ' whiskers. That is y-ung Poodle (one of the Devonshire Poodles), a Government clerk, | who feels that his mission in the world is to ' marry an heiress. He is in despair. He ! had been looking forward to hia waltz with j I Miss Moouish, and had carefully prepared a i little speech to be delivered in tremolo ' accents during one of the palpitating intervals of a round dance, and} when the time came to lead her out, she was nowhere to be found. When afterwards he met her by chance, she apologised; she said she had been in the cloak-room at the time pinning up a torn j dress, but young Spavins told him he saw her in the garden flirting with that odious snob, Propper. In spite of all that, tomorrow Poodle will tell his fellow clerks, who are not fortunate enough to be invited to Mrs. Hunter's entertainments, that he had such a jolly night. Then there is Lieutenant Yaw-yaw. To-morrow he will pull his moustache, and say, "Cawn't stand these colonial girls ; that Miss Blunt is intolerable ; throws herself at a fellah." He will carefully conceal the fact that Miss Blunt snubbed him, and so exoited his contemptible spite. Paying and receiving calls, again, come within the category of social fictions. Mrs. Muddles, in the sense of being visible to her callers, is never at home. You smile, murmur your regret, leave cards, and walk or drive away. When you next meet her, sho tells you how sorry she was whnn she returned to find you had called during her absence. If her inventive faculties are in good order, she will punish you with a circumstantial account of where she was on the day in question, and what she was doing. You try to look as though you believed it, remembering all the time the way in which her enfant terrible bawled out in the passage, "Jane, 'ou're a big story; mamma is not out ; she is in the kitchen making jam." Then there is Mrs. Effect, who keeps you waiting 20 minutes, and then sails into the room dressed in her most ravishing light silk. Sheteilsyouthatsbewasjustfinisliingapaintingfordearpapa's birthday gift jthat | when you rang she ran to wash the paint off herfingertips, orsomeotherflamequallyin enioua, which you, with equal insincerity and tin veracity, profess to believe. You know that the paint was more likely being applied than deterged. You have not overlooked the evidences of a hasty retreat presented by j the crushed sofa cushion, the dropped handkerchief, and the open novel. Nor j have you forgotten the sound of rushing j footsteps that reached your ear bpfoie the maid opened the door. More social fictions I — masculine ones. Who has not heard sensible and ordinarily truthful men aver that they possess the best wine and the finest horses in the place, when it is palpable, even to the most uninitiated, that their v^ines are wretclied and their horse* screws? I wonder if any man ever speaks the exact truth about his debts. Your Joseph Surface never admits that ha owes a farthing, whilsb your would-be Charles magnifies his petty debt of lf>, 20, or 30 pounds into "some hundreds." We all despise these deceits in others, We moat of us practise them, more or less, ourselves. When occasionally we meet a mind strong enough to free itself from conventional lies, we are repulsed, and call its owner "eccentric," and yet we all profess to love tvuth.