Page:Firecrackers a realistic novel.pdf/158



Mrs. Humphry Pollanger—Isabel, her intimate friends called her—occupied an anomalous and at the same time a strategic position in New York society. Without much difficulty she could trace her ancestry back to Anneke Jans Bogardus and, therefore, had she been so inclined, she was entitled to ally herself with the horde of similar descendants who sporadically sued Trinity Church Corporation for recognition of their proprietary rights in the sixty-three acres in lower Manhattan, much more valuable now than they were in the middle of the seventeenth century when Mrs. Bogardus died in what was then known as New Amsterdam. Mrs. Pollanger, however, did not entertain any such inclination. She had plenty of money, plenty of blood; her amiable ambition was for brains. So she joined all the women's clubs she could discover, wrote a paper on. The Relationship of the American Woman to the Young Intellectuals which, published in the Century, automatically admitted her to membership in the Authors' League, furnished her house with early American furniture, and entertained every visiting celebrity who would give her the privilege of doing so. She, therefore,