ply in proportion. They
occupy the majority of the mansions in the fashionable streets, crowd the
public thoroughfares and the Park with their costly and showy equipages,
and flaunt their wealth so coarsely and offensively in the faces of their
neighbors, that many good people have come to believe that riches and
vulgarity are inseparable. They make themselves the most conspicuous,
and are at once accepted by strangers as the "best society" of the
metropolis.

They are almost without exception persons who have risen from the ranks.
This is not to their discredit. On the contrary, every American is proud
to boast that this is emphatically the land of self-made men, that here
it is within the power of any one to rise as high in the social or
political scale as his abilities will carry him. The persons to whom we
refer, however, affect to despise this. They take no pride in the
institutions which have been so beneficial to them, but look down with
supreme disdain upon those who are working their way up. They are
ashamed of their origin, and you cannot offend one of them more than to
hint that you knew him a few years ago as a mechanic or a shopkeeper.

Some of the "fashionables" appear very unexpectedly before the world.
But a short while ago a family may have been living in the humbler
quarter of the city, or even in a tenement house. A sudden fortunate
speculation on the part of the husband, or father, may have brought them
enormous wealth in the course of a few days. A change is instantly made
from the humble abode to a mansion on Fifth or Madison avenue. The newly
acquired wealth is liberally expended in "fitting up," and the lucky
possessors of it boldly burst upon the world of fashion as stars of the
first magnitude. They are courted by all the newly rich, and invitations
to the houses of other "stars" are showered upon them. They may be rude,
ignorant, uncouth in manner, but they have wealth, and that is all that
is required. They are lucky indeed, if they hold their positions long.
A few manage to retain the wealth which comes to them thus suddenly, but
as a rule those who are simply lucky at the outset, find Dame Fortune a
very capricious goddess, and at the next turn of her wheel pass off the
stage to make room for others who are soon to share the same fate.

During the oil speculations, and during the war, the shoddy class was
largely increased by those who were made suddenly and unexpectedly rich