I judge that this custom holds also in some other cities of the region, for I remember calling at the office of a large investment company in Wilmington, North Carolina, to find it wearing, at three in the afternoon, the deserted look of a New York office between twelve and one o'clock.

Every one had gone home to dinner.

Mr.W.D.Howells, in his charming essay on Charleston, makes mention of this matter: "The place," he says, "has its own laws and usages, and does not trouble itself to conform to those of other aristocracies.

In London the best society dines at eight o'clock, and in Madrid at nine, but in Charleston it dines at four....

It makes morning calls as well as afternoon calls, but as the summer approaches the midday heat must invite rather to the airy leisure of the verandas, and the cool quiescence of interiors darkened against the fly in the morning and the mosquito at night-fall." The household fly is a year-round resident of Charleston, by grace of a climate which permits--barely permits, at its coldest--the use of the open surrey as a public vehicle in all seasons.