A comic first-person account follows a middlewestern couple and the wife's sister who move to New York after inheriting a modest fortune. The narrator recounts a series of linked episodes—parties, social schemes, romantic pursuits on behalf of the sister-in-law, and encounters with memorable city characters—delivering sharp, ironic observations about provincial assumptions, social climbing, and sudden comfort. Anecdotal and conversational in tone, the book balances warm domestic detail with satirical portraits of urban life, emphasizing character-driven humor and the small humiliations and triumphs of adapting to the big city.