THE best authorities on society and pleasuring, are divided in their opinion as to which class of human beings can boast of the dreariest and most soul-blighting pleasures. There are those who say that Newport,—with its little dinners of forty-eight, and everybody in gold tiaras and diamond stomachers—has it on any other stratum of social life for weariness and anguish. Others again like to back the claims of the small suburban villages, commuting centers— in New Jersey, let us say. You know what we mean—some of the Montclairs and all of the Oranges. Think of the "hearts" parties, the progressive euchres, the harvest festivals held in barns, and the team matches, for prizes, in bowling alleys. And then again there are those who insist that the Broadway theatrical set can suffer, more poignantly and more regularly, at their evening parties than any other kind of mammals. But our artist, after a tireless and lifelong pursuit of Pleasure, wishes respectfully to cast her vote for the soi-disant joys of Bohemia—a land inhabited by perpetrators of charades, by pale girls in pale smocks, by massive barefoot dancers, by participators in costume balls without any costumes, by ballad singers, and by the sad and apparently inexhaustible ukulele player.

The musical evening happens, once at least, in the life of every normal man. He must sit, in hopeless agony, praying to be stricken deaf, while a tireless after-dinner soprano, who sounds as if she were warping into her dock, goes through the whole musical table-d'hôte, from "My Laddie" all the way to "The End of a Perfect Day"

Then there are those jolly little negligée parties. They're so informal,—all the men are invited to wear their pajamas, and all the ladies are requested to dress as if they were just coming down to see if it really was a burglar. It's always so pleasant to arrive at the party, (undressed, according to explicit instructions) and find that every one else has disregarded the negligée clause in the contract, and come to the revel in ordinary evening clothes

Down in Greenwich Village, where the motto is "Bare and forbear," they must have their little back-to-nature dances, of an evening. You sit on a studio floor while a percheron type of heart-whole and fancy-free lady goes wild all over the place, and especially wild about six inches away from you. It must have been after one of these rhythmic, self revelation (admirable phrase, that) dances that Mr. Kipling wrote that deathless line, "And I learned about women from 'er"

Another blight is the charade party. Charades are rapidly becoming a favorite indoor sport in our best Bohemian circles. It's only an excuse to dress up, of course. They can't. call it a day, in arty circles, until they have gone into the guest's bedroom and changed their regular things for towels, doormats, sketchy underwear and all the rest of it. This picture shows the hideous plight of a poor wretch who has just dropped in on a few artistic friends and has been forced into acting— all alone—the syllable "kick," in the word Waikiki