exuberated
in her so far as to set her trying to do the mother's part for all men
and women who came within her range, even when their years far exceeded
hers. There was one great advantage to herself personally in this: it
kept her content in what had come to be her own sphere. One cannot go
meddling in the affairs of duchesses and countesses, and Ministers of
State, with whatever kindly desire of setting everything to rights and
making them all happy. People of that class give themselves such
haughty airs that they would rather remain unhappy in their own way
than obtain felicity at the hand of some person of inferior station. So
Mrs. Money believed; and perhaps one secret cause of her dislike to the
aristocracy (along with the avowed conviction that the aristocratic
system had somehow misprized and interfered with her husband) was the
feeling that if she were among them, they would not allow her to do
anything for them. She therefore maintained a circle of which she
herself was the queen, and patroness, and Lady Bountiful. She busied
herself about everybody's affairs, and was kind to everybody, without
any feeling of delight in the mere work of patronizing, but out of a
sheer pleasure in trying to make people happy. Naturally she made
mistakes, and the general system of her social circle worked so as to
occasion a continual change, a passing away of old friends and coming
in of new. As young men rose in the world and became independent, as
girls got married and came to consider themselves supreme in their own
sphere, they tended to move away from Mrs. Money's influence. Even the
grateful and the generous could not always avoid this. For beginners in
any path of life she was the specially appointed helper and friend; and
next to these she might be called the patron saint of failures. In her
circle were young poets, painters, lawyers, novelists, preachers,
ambitious men looking out for seats in Parliament, or beginners in
Parliament; also there were the gray old poets whom no one read; the
painters who could not get their pictures exhibited or bought; the men
who were in Parliament ten or twenty years ago, and got out and never
could get in again; and the inventors who could not impress any
government or capitalist with a sense of the value of their
discoveries. No front-rank, successful person of any kind was usually
to be found in Mrs. Money's rooms. Her guests were the youths who were
putting their armor on for the