Through the Eye of the Needle | Page 2

and teas, of their receptions and balls, and the
guests who were bidden to them. But this sort of unwholesome and
exciting gossip, which was formerly devoured by their readers with
inappeasable voracity, is no longer supplied, simply because the taste
for it has wholly passed away.
Much the same might be said of the social hospitalities which raised
our visitor's surprise. For example, many people are now asked to
dinner who really need a dinner, and not merely those who revolt from
the notion of dinner with loathing, and go to it with abhorrence. At the
tables of our highest social leaders one now meets on a perfect equality
persons of interesting minds and uncommon gifts who would once have

been excluded because they were hungry, or were not in the hostess's
set, or had not a new gown or a dress-suit. This contributes greatly to
the pleasure of the time, and promotes the increasing kindliness
between the rich and poor for which our status is above all things
notable.
The accusation which our critic brings that the American spirit has been
almost Europeanized away, in its social forms, would be less grounded
in the observance of a later visitor. The customs of good society must
be the same everywhere in some measure, but the student of the
competitive world would now find European hospitality Americanized,
rather than. American hospitality Europeanized. The careful research
which has been made into our social origins has resulted in bringing
back many of the aboriginal usages; and, with the return of the old
American spirit of fraternity, many of the earlier dishes as well as
amenities have been restored. A Thanksgiving dinner in the year 1906
would have been found more like a Thanksgiving dinner in 1806 than
the dinner to which Mr. Homos was asked in 1893, and which he has
studied so interestingly, though not quite without some faults of taste
and discretion. The prodigious change for the better in some material
aspects of our status which has taken place in the last twelve years
could nowhere be so well noted as in the picture he gives us of the
housing of our people in 1893. His study of the evolution of the
apartment-house from the old flat-house, and the still older single
dwelling, is very curious, and, upon the whole, not incorrect. But
neither of these last differed so much from the first as the
apartment-house now differs from the apartment-house of his day.
There are now no dark rooms opening on airless pits for the family, or
black closets and dismal basements for the servants. Every room has
abundant light and perfect ventilation, and as nearly a southern
exposure as possible. The appointments of the houses are no longer in
the spirit of profuse and vulgar luxury which it must be allowed once
characterized them. They are simply but tastefully finished, they are
absolutely fireproof, and, with their less expensive decoration, the rents
have been so far lowered that in any good position a quarter of nine or
ten rooms, with as many baths, can be had for from three thousand to
fifteen thousand dollars. This fact alone must attract to our metropolis
the best of our population, the bone and sinew which have no longer

any use for themselves where they have been expended in rearing
colossal fortunes, and now demand a metropolitan repose.
The apartments are much better fitted for a family of generous size than
those which Mr. Homos observed. Children, who were once almost
unheard of, and quite unheard, in apartment-houses, increasingly
abound under favor of the gospel of race preservation. The elevators
are full of them, and in the grassy courts round which the houses are
built, the little ones play all day long, or paddle in the fountains,
warmed with steam-pipes in the winter, and cooled to an agreeable
temperature in a summer which has almost lost its terrors for the
stay-at-home New-Yorker. Each child has his or her little plot of
ground in the roof-garden, where they are taught the once wellnigh
forgotten art of agriculture.
The improvement of the tenement-house has gone hand in hand with
that of the apartment-house. As nearly as the rate of interest on the
landlord's investment will allow, the housing of the poor approaches in
comfort that of the rich. Their children are still more numerous, and the
playgrounds supplied them in every open space and on every pier are
visited constantly by the better-to-do children, who exchange with them
lessons of form and fashion for the scarcely less valuable instruction in
practical life which the poorer little ones are able to give. The rents in
the tenement houses are reduced even more notably than those in the
apartment-houses, so that now, with the constant increase in wages,