nfortunately, the Americans
who compose this "set" are numerically weak. They are not represented to
the extent of being a dominating body, and oddly enough, the common
people, the shopkeepers, the people in the retail trades, do not
understand them as leaders from the fact that they are so completely
aloof that they never meet them. A sort of inner "holy of holies" is the
real aristocracy of America. What goes for society among the people, the
mob, and the press is the set (and a set means a faction, a clique)
known as the Four Hundred, so named because it was supposed to represent
the "blue blood" of New York ten years ago in its perfection. This Four
Hundred has its prototype in all cities, and in some cities is known as
the "fast set." In New York it is made up often of the descendants of
old families, the heads of whom in many instances were retail traders
within one hundred and fifty years ago; but the modern wealthy
representatives endeavor to forget this or skip over it. It is, however,
constantly kept alive by what is termed the "yellow press," which
delights in picturing the ancestor of one family as a pedler and an
itinerant trader, and the head of another family as a vegetable vender,
and so on, literally venting its spleen upon them.

In my studies in American sociology I asked many questions, and obtained
the most piquant replies from women. One lady, a leader in New York in
what I have termed the exclusive set, informed me with a laugh that the
ancestor of a well-known family of to-day, one which cuts a commanding
figure in society, was an ordinary laborer in the employ of her
grandfather. "Yet you receive them?" I suggested. The reply was a shrug
of charming shoulders, which, translated, meant that great wealth had
here enabled them to "bore" into the exclusive circle. I found that even
among these people, the _creme de la creme_ in the eyes of the people,
there were inner circles, and these were not on intimate terms with the
others. Here I met a member of the Washington and Lee family, a
descendant of Bishop Provoost, the first Episcopal bishop of New York,
and friend of Washington and Hamilton. This latter family is notable for
an ancestry running back to the massacre of St. Bartholomew and even
beyond. I astonished its charming descendant, who very delicately
informed me that she knew her ancestry as far back as 1200 A. D., when I
told her that I had my "family tree," as they call it, without a break