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“Mr. Jipson, I wish you’d square up that account of Look, Sharp, & Co., to-day,” said Mr. Cutt, entering the counting room.

“All folly!” said Jipson, scratching out a mistake from his day-book, and not heeding the remark, though he saw the person of his employer.

“Eh?” was the ejaculation of Cutt.

“All folly!”

“I don’t understand you, sir!” said Cutt, in utter astonishment.

“Oh! I beg pardon, sir,” said poor Jipson; “I beg pardon, sir. Engrossed in a little affair of my own, I quite overlooked your observation. I will attend to the account of Look, Sharp, & Co., at once, sir;” and while Jipson was at it, his employer went out, wondering what in faith could be the matter with Jipson, a man whose capacity and gentlemanly deportment the firm had tested to their satisfaction for many years previous. The little incident was mentioned to the partner, Comeagain. The firm first laughed, then wondered what was up to disturb the usual equilibrium of Jipson, and ended by hoping he hadn’t taken to drink or nothing!

“Guess I’d better do it,” soliloquizes Jipson. “My wife is a good woman enough, but like most women, lets her vanity trip up her common sense, now and then; she feels cut down to know that Tannersoil’s folks are plunging out with dinners and evening parties, troops of company, piano going, and bawling away their new fol-de-rol music. Yes, guess I’ll do it.

“Mrs. Jipson little calculates the horrors–not only in a pecuniary, but domestic sense–that these dinners, suppers and parties to the rag-tag and bobtail, cost many honest-meaning people, who ought to be ashamed of them.

“But, I’ll do it, if it costs me the whole quarter’s salary!”

A few days were sufficient to concoct details and arrange the programme. When Mrs. Jipson discovered, as she vainly supposed, the prevalence of “better sense” on the part of her husband, she was good as cranberry tart, and flew around in the best of humor, to hurry up the event that was to give eclat to the new residence and family of the Jipsons, slightly dim the radiance or mushroom glory of the Tannersoil family, and create a commotion generally–above Bleecker street!

Jipson drew on his employers, for a quarter’s salary. The draft was honored, of course, but it led to some speculation on the part of “the firm,” as to what Jipson was up to, and whether he wasn’t getting into evil habits, and decidedly bad economy in his old age. Jipson talked, Mrs. Jipson talked. Their almost–in fact, Mrs. J., like most ambitious mothers, thought, really –marriageable daughters dreamed and talked dinner parties for the full month, ere the great event of their lives came duly off.

One of the seeming difficulties was who to invite–who to get to come, and where to get them! Now, originally, the Jipsons were from the “Hills of New Hampshire, of poor but respectable” birth. Fifteen years in the great metropolis had not created a very extensive acquaintance among solid folks; in fact, New York society fluctuates, ebbs and flows at such a rate, that society–such as domestic people might recognize as unequivocally genteel–is hard to fasten to or find. But one of the Miss Jipsons possessed an acquaintance with a Miss Somebody else, whose brother was a young gentleman of very distingue air, and who knew the entire “ropes” of fashionable life, and people who enjoyed that sort of existence in the gay metropolis.

Mr. Theophilus Smith, therefore, was eventually engaged. It was his, as many others’ vocation, to arrange details, command the feast, select the company, and control the coming event. The Jipsons confined their invitations to the few, very few genteel of the family, and even the diminutiveness of the number invited was decimated by Mr. Smith, who was permitted to review the parties invited.