IT was owing to the last-minute illness of Mrs. Cornelius Marquardt that I had the good fortune to be included in this little dinner of Mme. Storey’s. Her guests do not often disappoint.
Everybody in the know is aware that the best talk in New York is to be heard around her table. She picks her guests’ with that end in view, careless of their social position. One may meet a visiting marquis or a tramp poet—the poet more often than the marquis.
Mme. Storey herself is a better talker, in my opinion, than any of them, but one would be slow to learn that at her own table. Her object there is merely to keep the ball rolling briskly. She likes to listen. better than to talk.
On this occasion the men included Ambrose G. Larned, the brilliant. advertising man, who had introduced so many new ide
