A case in point is that of a lady visiting in a Virginia city who, while calling at the house of some "F.F.V's," was asked by a little girl, the daughter of the house, where she had been born.
"Mawtha," said the little girl's mother, after the caller had departed, "you must not ask people where they were bo'n.

If they were bo'n in Va'ginia they will tell you so without asking, and if they weren't bo'n in Va'ginia it's very embarrassing." Some of the old families of the inner circle are in a tragic state of decay, owing to inbreeding; others, in a more wholesome physical and mental condition, are perpetually wrestling with the heritage of poverty left over from the War--"too proud to whitewash and too poor to paint"-- clinging desperately to the old acres, and to the old houses which are like beautiful, tired ancestral ghosts.
Until a few years ago the one resource of Virginian gentlewomen in need of funds was to take boarders, but more lately the daughters of distinguished but poverty-stricken families have found that they may work in offices.

Thus, in the town of which I speak, several ladies who are very much "in society," support themselves by entertaining "paying guests," while others are stenographers.

The former, I was told, by the way, make it a practice to avoid first-hand business contacts with their guests by sending them their bills through the mail, and requiring that response be made by means of the same impersonal channel..