it was the year 1921, and women had begun to cut off their hair and wear their skirts above their knees and drink gin out of silver flasks in public. Now and then one of them drank too much and had to be taken home. The gossips had a great deal to shake their heads over. In the light of what followed, the twenties seem on the whole a charming, carefree period. So far as good manners are concerned, it was the beginning of the end.
