had been
accused of cowardice or card-sharping. And there was nothing whatever
the matter with the poor young man except that some rotten mine or other
in Arizona had not 'made good.' Now in England we should either be below
or above that ideal of good. If we were snobs, we should be content to
know that he was a gentleman of good connections, perhaps too much
accustomed to private means to be expected to be businesslike. If we
were somewhat larger-minded people, we should know that he might be as
wise as Socrates and as splendid as Bayard and yet be unfitted, perhaps
one should say therefore be unfitted, for the dismal and dirty gambling
of modern commerce. But whether we were snobbish enough to admire him
for being an idler, or chivalrous enough to admire him for being an
outlaw, in neither case should we ever really and in our hearts despise
him for being a failure. For it is this inner verdict of instinctive
idealism that is the point at issue. Of course there is nothing new, or
peculiar to the new world, about a man's engagement practically failing
through his financial failure. An English girl might easily drop a man
because he was poor, or she might stick to him faithfully and defiantly
although he was poor. The point is that this girl was faithful but she
was not defiant; that is, she was not proud. The whole psychology of the
situation was that she shared the weird worldly idealism of her family,
and it was wounded as her patriotism would have been wounded if he had
betrayed his country. To do them justice, there was nothing to show that
they would have had any real respect for a royal duke who had inherited
millions; what the simple barbarians wanted was a man who could 'make
good.' That the process of making good would probably drag him through
the mire of everything bad, that he would make good by bluffing, lying,
swindling, and grinding the faces of the poor, did not seem to trouble
them in the least. Against this fanaticism there is this shadow of truth
even in the fiction of aristocracy; that a gentleman may at least be
allowed to be good without being bothered to make it.

Another objection to the phrase about the almighty dollar is that it is
an almighty phrase, and therefore an almighty nuisance. I mean that it
is made to explain everything, and to explain everything much too well;
that is, much too easily. It does not really help people to understand a
foreign country; but it gives them the fatal illu