ful of black wives, or the zareba full of
cattle, or the two-score camels and asses, or the factory, or the farm,
or the block of buildings, or the railroad bonds, or the bank stock, or
the hoarded cash, or--anything that stands for wealth and consideration
and independence, and can secure to the possessor that most precious of
all things, another man's envy. It was a dull person that invented the
idea that the American's devotion to the dollar is more strenuous than
another's.

Rich American girls do buy titles, but they did not invent that idea;
it had been worn threadbare several hundred centuries before America
was discovered. European girls still exploit it as briskly as ever;
and, when a title is not to be had for the money in hand, they buy the
husband without it. They must put up the "dot," or there is no trade.
The commercialization of brides is substantially universal, except in
America. It exists with us, to some little extent, but in no degree
approaching a custom.

"The Englishman dearly loves a lord."

What is the soul and source of this love? I think the thing could be
more correctly worded:

"The human race dearly envies a lord."

That is to say, it envies the lord's place. Why? On two accounts, I
think: its Power and its Conspicuousness.

Where Conspicuousness carries with it a Power which, by the light of our
own observation and experience, we are able to measure and comprehend, I
think our envy of the possessor is as deep and as passionate as is
that of any other nation. No one can care less for a lord than the
backwoodsman, who has had no personal contact with lords and has seldom
heard them spoken of; but I will not allow that any Englishman has a
profounder envy of a lord than has the average American who has lived
long years in a European capital and fully learned how immense is the
position the lord occupies.

Of any ten thousand Americans who eagerly gather, at vast inconvenience,
to get a glimpse of Prince Henry, all but a couple of hundred will be
there out of an immense curiosity; they are burning up with desire to
see a personage who is so much talked about. They envy him; but it is
Conspicuousness they envy mainly, not the Power that is lodged in his
royal quality and position, for they have but a vague and spectral
knowledge and appreciation of that; though their environment and
associations they have been accustomed to regard such things lightly,
and as not being very real; conse