She had gone into the White House a young, guileless, average, common American girl; she had represented, in the high position accorded to her by the hearts of the people, the first lady of the land, with a simplicity and dignity pleasing to every American woman from Maine to Texas. She had welcomed the friends of her girlhood, before, as wife of the President, she became the most prominent female figure in the land, with the same cordiality that as Miss Frances Folsom she had exhibited towards them. The unassuming air with which she occupied her high position as sharer of the honors of the Chieftain of a free people, endeared her to the hearts of the mass of us, “Common People.” The farmer’s wife in Illinois, the mechanic’s wife at Homestead, Pa., the banker’s wife at Philadelphia, the railroad president’s wife in New York, felt a ray of sunshine warming that spot in woman’s heart, which is the Holy of Holies with them, young wifehood; and when Time, the great scene-shifter, had rearranged the setting of the stage, and presented to us the picture of the young mother, she became as interesting an object as the President himself. She had given to America another American. She had set an example for the women of our land which it would be well, my lady in your palace on Fifth avenue, to follow. Do not leave the future generations, who will rule the destinies of this nation, to be the offspring of foreigners; forego your balls, receptions, entertainments, and your trips to Europe; endure the inconvenience and annoyance of the nursery. Let us have some American children born. The prattle of the baby’s tongue will be sweeter music to your ear than the lisping flattery of some foreign duke. You may have the honor of being a mother of some future Jefferson, Jackson, Webster, Clay, Calhoun, Lincoln, Garfield, Cleveland.
God bless you, Frances Cleveland, for the example you have set! Thoughts of you and sweet memories of the past, as dear even to the poorest woman as to the Queen of Great Britain and Empress of India, make Democrats of the hard-worked, poor old wife and mother in the little farmhouse of Illinois and Indiana. There is no scene in Grover Cleveland’s career to-day so embalmed in the hearts of the people as that wherein he is described as refusing to talk politics with one of the political satellites that ever hover round planets of the political firmament, putting them aside that he might watch the tottering footsteps of baby Ruth. It was just like any other man of the people, and the people recognized, as they did in the life and acts of Abraham Lincoln, that Grover Cleveland is one of us.
When some member of the “smart set,” who allies herself with the effete nobility of Europe, gives to the world a sample of what a man should be, as did the humble American wife, Nancy Lincoln, then the “Common People” will forget their wrath at the absurd assumption of the worshipers of the British peerage. Women like Martha Washington, Nancy Lincoln, Carrie Harrison, and Frances Cleveland, will ever be contrasted with those samples of the “smart set” who seek the society of the snobs and swells of foreign nations. The wrath of the people will ever be aroused at the arrogant assumption of snobbery and sham aristocracy upon the part of the successful searchers after titles.
The saying, by the “smart set,” that the “Common People” have nothing to do with them or their actions, or with how they dispose of their wealth, is quite true; but the unwise exhibition of an attempt to create class distinctions, can arouse such gusts of anger that that wealth, which is held only by paying such taxes as the “Common People” may decree (being, as they are, the majority), that much-prized wealth may be swept away, as a handful of dust, before the storm of the people’s anger.
The correspondent of the New York World hastens to vindicate the just censure written, from any suspicion of prejudice concerning New York’s “Four Hundred”; but, in the attempt to vindicate, gives evidence enough of the thought of the people with regard to the morals of any “smart set” possessed of unlimited millions, totally idle, selfish, and luxurious:—
“To vindicate my censures from any suspicion of prejudice, let me hasten to add that the tone of New York’s ‘Four Hundred’ is better than that of any corresponding set in the world. Comparisons are not satisfactory, because the society of Paris is the society of all France, and the society of London is the society of the whole British Empire. Compared with these, the social aristocracy of New York is merely a little clique. It is only just to say that it has not yet reached the coarseness of that fast set in London, which it aspires to imitate, and, if it lacks the refinement which centuries of courtly teaching have given to even the most unruly elements of French aristocracy, it also falls short of that cynicism which ignores all moral influences. Perhaps the present lowered tone of society may be only a passing malady. Perhaps things may get better before they get worse. Who knows? We can only say that unlimited millions, total idleness, and selfish luxury, are conditions not usually conducive to the elevation of morals.”
What the people meant by the exhibition of their wrath last November, in the vote that they cast against what they deemed the party of the “smart set,” was the creation only of pictures in future, so sweetly pure as that with which the World correspondent winds up the article:—
