o out and spend
something." And they go out. They spend their lives in spending. They
deliberately gaze into shop windows in order to discover an outlet for
their money. You can catch them at it any day.

* * * * *

I do not belong to this class by birth. Artists very seldom do. I was born
slightly beneath it. But by the help of God and strict attention to
business I have gained the right of entrance into it. I admit that I have
imitated its deportment, with certain modifications of my own; I think its
deportment is in many respects worthy of imitation. I am acquainted with
members of it; some are artists like myself; a few others win my sympathy
by honestly admiring my work; and the rest I like because I like them. But
the philosopher in me cannot, though he has tried, melt away my profound
and instinctive hostility to this class. Instead of decreasing, my
hostility grows. I say to myself: "I can never be content until this class
walks along the street in a different manner, until that now absurd
legend has been worn clean off its forehead." Henry Harland was not a
great writer, but he said: _Il faut souffrir pour etre sel._ I ask myself
impatiently: "When is this salt going to begin to suffer?" That is my
attitude towards the class. I frequent it but little. Nevertheless I know
it intimately, nearly all the intimacy being on my side. For I have
watched it during long, agreeable, sardonic months and years in foreign
hotels. In foreign hotels you get the essence of it, if not the cream.

* * * * *

Chief among its characteristics--after its sincere religious worship of
money and financial success--I should put its intense self-consciousness
as a class. The world is a steamer in which it is travelling saloon.
Occasionally it goes to look over from the promenade deck at the steerage.
Its feelings towards the steerage are kindly. But the tone in which it
says "the steerage" cuts the steerage off from it more effectually than
many bulkheads. You perceive also from that tone that it could never be
surprised by anything that the steerage might do. Curious social
phenomenon, the steerage! In the saloon there runs a code, the only
possible code, the final code; and it is observed. If it is not observed,
the infraction causes pain, distress. Another marked characteristic is its
gigantic temperamental dullness, unresponsiveness to external suggestion,
a lack of humo