Wharton, Edith — The Age of Innocence [1334]

Every year on the fifteenth of October Fifth Avenue opened its shutters, unrolled its carpets and hung up its triple layer of window-curtains. … By the first of November this household ritual was over, and society had begun to look about and take stock of itself. By the fifteenth the season was in full blast, Opera and theaters were putting forth their new attractions, dinner engagements were accumulating, and dates for dances being fixed. And punctually at about this time Mrs. Archer always said that New York was very much changed. — Wharton, Edith, The Age of Innocence, 1334

Note

The seasonal calendar of New York society is rendered as household ritual — shutters, carpets, curtains — and the refrain ‘Mrs. Archer always said that New York was very much changed’ turns the passage into a wry formula, the annual pronouncement of a static world that insists it is disintegrating.