JAY GOULD.
Died December, 1892, worth $70,000,000.
“What a different social vista is presented to us when we turn to look back on the long and peaceful life of Emerson’s widow, who died last week at the ripe age of ninety. Although she made no claim on the world’s regard, we catch pleasant glimpses of her personality along the path of the great philosopher’s life, like the sunshine showing through the leaves of the Concord elms. Beside the simple dignity of a life like hers, how unsatisfactory appears the career of an over-dressed, over-fed, over-rich woman of fashion, worn out in the scramble and struggle to keep up with the procession.”
The people desire, and have so expressed themselves, by the mighty voice of the majority, a return to the simple, natural condition of social life in America, wherein “caste” has no place, from which social distinctions disappear; the simple, homely, every-day, virtuous life of the mothers, wives, and daughters of those who made the Republic.
The “Common People” have recorded their protest against snobbery, sham aristocracy, “smart sets,” Ward McAllister, and multi-millionaires, who assume to be better, either by “divine right” or otherwise, than the ordinary American citizen. They have taught, by the lesson preached in the tremendous majorities for that party whom they deemed least tainted with this repugnant crime, that wealth, arrogance, assumption, and snobbery may have obtained an undue amount of influence, disproportioned to its merit, but that, thank God, on election day, every citizen of the Republic enjoys an equal right to the franchise, and that, by the voice of the majority, he will create such laws as to eradicate the insidious disease of “caste” from the wholesome body of the nation.
CHAPTER VI. THE ARISTOCRATIC “CHAPPIE” vs. ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
As that satellite of McAllister, that scion of the line of “Patriarchs,” parades Fifth Avenue, creating by his presence an aristocratic atmosphere for the poor, Common People to enjoy, what a picture he presents! How admirable and worthy of emulation!