“Remembering all this, I resolved, in 1872, to establish in New York an American Almack’s, taking men instead of women, being careful to select only the leading representative men of the city, who had the right to create and lead society. I knew all would depend upon our making a proper selection. I made up an Executive Committee of three gentlemen, who daily met at my house, and we went to work in earnest to make a list of those we should ask to join in the undertaking. One of this committee, a very bright, clever man, hit upon the name of ‘Patriarchs’ for the Association, which was at once adopted, and then, after some discussion, we limited the number of Patriarchs to twenty-five, and that each Patriarch, for his subscription, should have the right of inviting to each ball four ladies and five gentlemen, including himself and family; that all distinguished strangers, up to fifty, should be asked; and then established the rules governing the giving of these balls—all of which, with some slight modifications, have been carried out to the letter to this day. The following gentlemen were then asked to become ‘Patriarchs,’ and at once joined the little band:

John Jacob Astor,Royal Phelps,
William Astor,Edwin A. Post,
De Lancey Kane,A. Gracie King,
Ward McAllister,Lewis M. Rutherford,
George Henry Warren,Robert G. Remsen,
Eugene A. Livingston,Wm. C. Schermerhorn,
William Butler Duncan, Francis R. Rives,
E. Templeton Snelling,Maturin Livingston,
Lewis Colford Jones,Alex. Van Rensselaer,
John W. Hamersley,Walter Langdon,
Benjamin S. Welles,F. G. D’Hauteville,
Frederick Sheldon,C. C. Goodhue,
William R. Travers.”

These proud patriots, constituting a tribunal upon whose decision a man’s claim to social equality with any other citizen in New York must rest, could find much in the conduct of their descendants to question with regard to their title to social superiority. The ventilation given to the Drayton-Borrowe-Millbank affair reflected no great credit upon the great name Astor—the first on the list of the “Patriarchs.” The asinine utterances of a descendant of another of the “Patriarchs,” which is here given, gives little evidence of inherited wisdom or common sense.

In the curious case recently tried in New York relative to the right of a women’s association to erect a statue to a lady who, though counted among the metropolitan “Four Hundred,” was possessed of much public spirit and philanthropic energy, one of the witnesses—a member of the same family—testified that her grandfather “never invited such people as Horace Greeley” to his house. A correspondent of the New York World enquires:

“Is it possible that we have an aristocratic society in this republican country of ours to which the great founder of the Tribune could not be admitted? Horace Greeley was born in New Hampshire, the native State of Gen. John Stark, Levi Woodbury, Daniel Webster, and a long line of soldiers, statesmen, and men famous in literature. If it is a title to aristocracy to belong to a family who were original settlers of the country, the Hamiltons are comparatively a new people, the great founder of the family being an emigrant from the West Indian island of Nevis about the year 1770. The Schuylers derive their distinction from Major-General Philip Schuyler, who was a distinguished officer of the Revolution, but whose services could not compare with those of that sterling old hero of Bennington—John Stark.

“Why, Mr. Editor, there are thousands of good Democratic citizens who can trace back their descent to the Pilgrim Fathers, more than a hundred years before Alexander Hamilton landed from the West Indies. Is it not a relic of feudal times and barbarism to claim distinction above our fellows and superiority of birth on account of the deeds of an ancestor a hundred or more years ago?

“‘Honor and fame from no condition rise.

Act well your part; there all the honor lies.’”

JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER,

A Magnate of the Standard Oil Company.

Shades of the great dead of journalism, the Bennetts, Raymonds, and others who have left the stamp of their genius upon newspaperdom in America, look down and pity the inane idiot who gives utterance to sentiments concerning Horace Greeley like those of the descendant of one of the “Patriarchs!” And men who occupy positions in the world of journalism, like Halstead, Cockerill, Clark Howell, how like you such utterances?