which is uppermost,
not having any traditions of how their forefathers passed their time.

Last night there was a dinner party and some such clever men came. They
were great financiers or business men or heads of Trusts. That means you
have a splendid opportunity to speculate, only if anything goes wrong you
have to chance all your other associates on the trust turning against you
and saying it was all your fault, and then you generally have to commit
suicide; but while you are head you can become frightfully rich and
respected. I sat between two of the most successful of different things,
and they talked all the time. They don't want to hear what you have to say,
only to tell you about themselves and their ideas, so it is most
interesting. They are not the least cultivated in literature or art or
anything decorative, but full of ideas upon the future evolution of schemes
and things; really intensely clever, some of them. Only the odd part of it
is they don't seem to speculate upon what the marvellous conglomeration of
false proportions, unbalance and luxury are going to bring their nation to,
if they are not careful.

Mr. Spleist (that is our host's name) is so kind! He spoils his wife and
Natalie more even than Harry spoils Ermyntrude; and the son-in-law is just
the same to his wife. American husbands fetch and carry and come to heel
like trained spaniels, and it is perfectly lovely; everything is so simple.
If you happen to get bored with your husband, or he has a cold in his head,
or anything that gets on your nerves, or you suddenly fancy some other man,
you have not got all the bother and subterfuge of taking him for a lover
and chancing a scandal like in England. You simply get your husband to let
_you_ divorce _him,_ and make him give you heaps of money, and
you keep the children if you happen to want them; or--there is generally
only one--you agree to give that up for an extra million if he fancies it;
and then you go off and marry your young man when he is free; because all
American men are married, and he will have had to get his wife to divorce
him. But when it is all "through," then it is comfortable and tidy, only
the families get mixed after a while, and people have to be awfully careful
not to ask them out to dinner together. One little girl at a dancing class
is reported to have said to another: "What do you think of your new Papa? I
think he is a mean cuss. He gave me no candy when he was mine."

Octa