This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1904 edition. Excerpt: ... AYEAR later, in the early days of spring and the closing weeks of the next State Assembly, Carlton Howard and his son Paul sat conversing in Mrs. Wilson's study. They had been dining with her, and on rising from the table she had invited them to keep her company in her private apartment while she busied herself with matters incident to the entertainment she was to give in a little more than a week to the members of the American Society for the Discussion of Social Problems, as the crowning festivity to its four days' meeting in Benham. Mrs. Wilson was elated over the opportunity to mingle the thoughtful people of the country-- some of whom, as seen at annual meetings of the society elsewhere, appeared to her to have cultivated intellectual aptness at the expense of the graces of life--and Benham's fashionable coterie. She reasoned that the experience would be stimulating for both, and with her secretary at her elbow she was absorbed in planning various features to give distinction to the event. Her hospitality, from one point of view, would not be the first of its kind in the annals of the society, for at each of the last two meetings--the one in Chicago, the other in St. Louis--there had been an attempt to entertain the members more lavishly than hitherto. So in a sense she felt herself on her mettle to set before her visitors the best which Benham afforded, and so effectively as to eclipse the past and at the same time bring a little nearer that appropriate blending between beauty and wisdom to which she looked forward as an ultimate social aim. She had been of many minds as to what form her entertainment should take, and had finally settled on this programme: Dinner was to be served at her house to the seventy-five visiting and...