ountry estates, building houses and stables which
will make it easy to entertain their friends, and depending for society
on chosen guests rather than on the mob of millionaires who come
together for social rivalry. But I do not fret myself about it. Society
will stratify itself according to the laws of social gravitation. It
will take a generation or two more, perhaps, to arrange the strata by
precipitation and settlement, but we can always depend on one principle
to govern the arrangement of the layers. People interested in the same
things will naturally come together. The youthful heirs of fortunes
who keep splendid yachts have little to talk about with the oarsman who
pulls about on the lake or the river. What does young Dives, who drives
his four-in-hand and keeps a stable full of horses, care about Lazarus,
who feels rich in the possession of a horse-railroad ticket? You
know how we live at our house, plainly, but with a certain degree of
cultivated propriety. We make no pretensions to what is called "style."
We are still in that social stratum where the article called "a
napkin-ring" is recognized as admissible at the dinner-table. That fact
sufficiently defines our modest pretensions. The napkin-ring is the
boundary mark between certain classes. But one evening Mrs. Butts and
I went out to a party given by the lady of a worthy family, where the
napkin itself was a newly introduced luxury. The conversation of the
hostess and her guests turned upon details of the kitchen and the
laundry; upon the best mode of raising bread, whether with "emptins"
(emptyings, yeast) or baking powder; about "bluing" and starching and
crimping, and similar matters. Poor Mrs. Butts! She knew nothing more
about such things than her hostess did about Shakespeare and the musical
glasses. What was the use of trying to enforce social intercourse under
such conditions? Incompatibility of temper has been considered ground
for a divorce; incompatibility of interests is a sufficient warrant for
social separation. The multimillionaires have so much that is common
among themselves, and so little that they share with us of moderate
means, that they will naturally form a specialized class, and in virtue
of their palaces, their picture-galleries, their equipages, their
yachts, their large hospitality, constitute a kind of exclusive
aristocracy. Religion, which ought to be the great leveller, cannot
reduce these elements to the same grade. You may rea