Read "An East-Side Ramble" by William Dean Howells online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
The New Yorkers, following the custom of Europe, often fence themselves / about with a great deal of ceremony in social matters, even such small / social matters as making calls.
Some ladies have days when they receive calls; others have no specified / day, and then you take your chance of being turned from the door / without seeing them, or if you find them, of finding them reluctant and / preoccupied. A friend of mine says he has often felt as if he had been / admitted through the error of the man or the maid who opened the door / to him at such houses, and who returned, after carrying up his name, to / say, with a frightened air, that the lady would be down in a moment.