In the surroundings above outlined, how could anyone, whether newly rich or long rich, lead other than a sordid life? Money is there necessarily the basis of all action, the determiner of the complexion of every thought.
To the narrow vision of the palace dweller and of those who look only at palace dwellers, America seems like a greedy, ill-mannered child released upon a candy shop. In the wide, the true aspect it seems a man, intelligently developing himself, fevered by a sense of the shortness of life and the vastness of its opportunities.
In the one aspect it suggests an express rushing along, with the engineer mad and the passengers drunk. In the other aspect it suggests its own miraculous sky-scrapers, rising swift as an exhalation, high as the clouds, yet securely founded upon the rock.
CHAPTER IV
YOUTH AMONG THE MONEY-MANIACS
The typical young men of the America of fashion and high finance, created by the multi-millionaire, fall into two classes—the born successes, sons or heirs of rich men; the candidates for success. It is hardly necessary to say that in this connection success always means the accumulation of riches enough to enable one to make a stir even among the very rich.
If the young man is a born success, all that is left for him to achieve is to devise some plan for making a stir—the simplest way being to marry some woman with a talent for doing original and striking things. No matter how great his income, if he is not to suffer the fate of being an obscure follower, a merely rich person, suspected of stinginess, stupidity and vulgarity to boot, he must do something out of the ordinary—assemble an astonishing establishment, have the finest pictures, give the finest dinners and dances, run the fastest horses or the most demoniac automobile, give large sums on some original plan to education and philanthropy.
The chances are that the born success will marry in his own set—that is, the daughter or the heiress of some rich man. This will be due in large part to deliberation; also, neither is likely to know well many people who are not rich or of the rich. If he is the eldest son, the probabilities, the increasing probabilities are that he will inherit the bulk of the fortune, no matter how many brothers and sisters he may have. Some one in the next generation must maintain the family magnificence. Naturally, therefore, an unwritten law of primogeniture is rapidly growing in force and effect.
And this custom, combined with the rapidity with which great wealth piles up in America for him who has great commercial skill, insures us a future of ever more dazzling splendor, of luxury and extravagance—an immediate future; we will not here speculate as to that future which is more remote, but not less certain.
A short time ago a young man—a “born success”—went to a beautiful country house near New York to make a Saturday-to-Monday visit. He brought with him two huge trunks. These were taken to the almost magnificent suite of rooms which had been assigned to him. His valet unlocked the trunks and summoned the chambermaid. The two servants stripped from the bed the sheets and pillow-cases and covers; then from the trunks they took the young man’s own wonderful bed-clothing, woven especially for him by the best looms in Europe. These creations were put on the bed in place of the silk and fine linen which the owner of the country house, a very rich man, regarded as fit for a king, but which this young man thought far too coarse for contact with his delicate skin.