al boundaries have less significance. The
number of Americans who rent houses in London and Paris, and shooting
boxes in Scotland, is large.

Hence the moral tone of Continental society and of the English
aristocracy is gradually becoming more and more our own. But with this
difference--that, as the aristocracy in England and Continental Europe
is a separate caste, a well-defined order, having set metes and bounds,
which considers itself superior to the rest of the population and views
it with indifference, so its morals are regarded as more or less its own
affair, and they do not have a wide influence on the community at large.

Even if he drinks champagne every night at dinner the Liverpool pickle
merchant knows he cannot get into the king's set; but here the pickle
man can not only break into the sacred circle, but he and his fat wife
may themselves become the king and queen. So that a knowledge of how
smart society conducts itself is an important matter to every man and
woman living in the United States, since each hopes eventually to make a
million dollars and move to New York. With us the fast crowd sets the
example for society at large; whereas in England looseness in morals is
a recognized privilege of the aristocracy to which the commoner may not
aspire.

The worst feature of our situation is that the quasi-genteel working
class, of whom our modern complex life supports hundreds of
thousands--telephone operators, stenographers, and the like--greedily
devour the newspaper accounts of the American aristocracy and model
themselves, so far as possible, after it. It is almost unbelievable how
intimate a knowledge these young women possess of the domestic life,
manner of speech and dress of the conspicuous people in New York
society.

I once stepped into the Waldorf with a friend of mine who wished to send
a telephone message. He is a quiet, unassuming man of fifty, who
inherited a large fortune and who is compelled, rather against his will,
to do a large amount of entertaining by virtue of the position in
society which Fate has thrust on him. It was a long-distance call.

"Who shall I say wants to talk?" asked the goddess with fillet-bound
yellow hair in a patronizingly indifferent tone.

"Mr.----," answered my companion.

Instantly the girl's face was suffused with a smile of excited wonder.

"Are you Mr.----, the big swell who gives all the dinners and dances?"
she inquired.

"I suppose I'm the man," he