The great winter's contest of the visiting-cards recommences at the end of
every autumn. Suspended during the summer, or only renewed at Newport and
such thoroughbred and thoroughly sophisticated haunts, it will set in with
fury in the habitable regions of our cities before the snow falls. Now will
the atmosphere of certain streets and squares be darkened--or whitened--at
the appointed hour by the shower of pasteboard transmitted from dainty
kid-gloved hands to the cotton-gloved hands of "John," and destined
through him to reach the possibly gloveless hands of some other John,
who stands obsequious in the doorway. Now will every lady, after John
has slammed the door, drive happily on to some other door, rearranging,
as she goes, her display of cards, laid as if for a game on the opposite
seat of her carriage, and dealt perhaps in four suits,--her own cards,
her daughters', her husband's, her "Mr. and Mrs." cards, and who knows
how many more? With all this ammunition, what a very _mitrailleuse_ of
good society she becomes; what an accumulation of polite attentions she
may discharge at any door! That one well-appointed woman, as she sits
in her carriage, represents the total visiting power of self, husband,
daughters, and possibly a son or two beside. She has all their
counterfeit presentments in her hands. How happy she is! and how happy
will the others be on her return, to think that dear mamma has disposed
of so many dear, beloved, tiresome, social foes that morning! It will
be three months at least, they think, before the A's and the B's and
the C's will have to be "done" again.
Ah! but who knows how soon these fatiguing letters of the alphabet,
rallying to the defence, will come, pasteboard in hand, to return the
onset? In this contest, fair ladies, "there are blows to take as well as
blows to give," in the words of the immortal Webster. Some day, on
returning, you will find a half-dozen cards on your own table that will
undo all this morning's work, and send you forth on the warpath again. Is
it not like a campaign? It is from this subtle military analogy, doubtless,
that when gentlemen happen to quarrel, in the very best society, they
exchange cards as preliminary to a duel; and that, when French journalists
fight, all other French journalists show their sympathy for the survivor by
sending him their cards. When we see, therefore, these heroic ladies riding
forth in the social battle's magnificently stern array, our hearts render
them the homage due to the brave. When we consider how complex their
military equipment has grown, we fancy each of these self-devoted mothers
to be an Arnold Winkelried, receiving in her martyr-breast the points of a
dozen different cards, and shouting, "Make way for liberty!" For is it not
securing liberty to have cleared off a dozen calls from your list, and
found nobody at home?
If this sort of thing goes on, who can tell where the paper warfare shall
end? If ladies may leave cards for their husbands, who are never seen out
of Wall Street, except when they are seen at their clubs; or for their
sons, who never forsake their billiards or their books,--why can they not
also leave them for their ancestors, or for their remotest posterity? Who
knows but people may yet drop cards in the names of the grandchildren whom
they only wish for, or may reconcile hereditary feuds by interchanging
pasteboard in behalf of two hostile grandparents who died half a century
ago?
And there is another social observance in which the introduction of the
card system may yet be destined to save much labor,--the attendance on
fashionable churches. Already, it is said, a family may sometimes reconcile
devout observance with a late breakfast, by stationing the family carriage
near the church-door--empty. Really, it would not be a much emptier
observance to send the cards alone by the footman; and doubtless in the
progress of civilization we shall yet reach that point. It will have many
advantages. The _effete_ of society, as some cruel satirist has called
them, may then send their orisons on pasteboard to as many different
shrines as they approve; thus insuring their souls, as it were, at several
different offices. Church architecture may be simplified, for it will
require nothing but a card-basket. The clergyman will celebrate his solemn
ritual, and will then look in that convenient receptacle for the names of
his fellow-worshippers, as a fine lady, after her "reception," looks over
the cards her footman hands her, to know which of her dear friends she has
been welcoming. Religion, as well as social proprieties, will glide
smoothly over a surface of glazed pasteboard; and it will be only very
humble Christians, indeed, who will do their worshipping in person, and
will hold to the worn-out and obsolete practice of "No Cards."