File:The Buntling ball, a Græco-American play; (1884) (14753597126).jpg

Identifier: buntlingballgrco00fawc (find matches)
Title: The Buntling ball, a Græco-American play;
Year: 1884 (1880s)
Authors: Fawcett, Edgar, 1847-1904
Subjects: Socialites
Publisher: New York (etc.) Funk & Wagnalls
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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that am ignobly classedWith caterers, musicians, florists, menWho toil for pay with gross plebeian souls.Why did I fling the splendor of my fameThus broadcast on barbaric boorishness?I should have held myself at rarer worth;I should have recollected I was I.Now never any more in future timeIt shall be as it was with Filigree. 84 THE BUN TUNG BALL. Already do I hear the cruel taleBandied from lip to lip of how I metImpertinence abominable, thrustAt my respectability supreme. Chorus of Gossips. Yea, Filigree, thou shalt in sooth receive No mercy at our hands.Thou knowest, and none knows better, we believe,The mission that we bear, the tasks we achieve, In all societies throughout all lands.But oft we fancy that our tongues wear forkDeadlier and keener when we make New York Our lair and dwelling-place.And yet we peradventure do mistake,Thus localizing the chief woes we wake,Since in all cities, Paris, London, Rome,Wherever man is faulty, foolish, base,We are and shall be equally at home.
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86 THE BUNTLING BALL. The old classic Furies were but three,And yet far otherwise it is with us,Whose number is truly multitudinous,Although we flagellate in like degree.Think not to escape us ; vigilant are we,And armed at every point with cunning tact.Minute indeed the unimportant factThat can evade our piercing search;Trivial indeed the least diurnal actThat leaves our curiosity in the lurch. We know with what unflagging forceThose tireless Greenbacques ever push and squeezeIn their inflexibly propulsive course,And almost supplicate upon their kneesFor cards to dinners, parties, ante-prandial teas. We have seen Sibylla Moneypenny bowWith cold impertinence to Ida Gray,Whom once she fawned upon because au faitIn fashionable matters, but whom nowShe finds of no more use in her ascentUp aristocracys aerial stairs. THE BUNTLING BALL. 87 We have heard how young Kate Pertinax has spentWhole hours in mending frocks and cleaning gloves,Since every rag the poor dear pauper wearsHer own hand

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