The Passing of the Idle Rich

by Frederick Townsend Martin

At a dinner party given by a notorious millionaire, each guest discovered in one of his oysters a magnificent black pearl. It was a fitting prelude to a sumptuous banquet and it contained an element of surprise. It was said that the dinner cost the giver twenty thousand dollars.

A party of engineers were studying the country in a Southern state with an eye to a future railroad. Accompanying them was a tired young man of wealth, who had little interest in what they were doing, and who had gone with them in search of possible amusement. He found it. The party discovered an aged family of primitive negroes living in a wretched hovel on the edge of a swamp. The millionaire was struck by the utter desolation of the house and its occupants. It occurred to him that he might find it interesting to aid the darkeys. He parted company with the engineers, and, with a single friend, he gave himself over to bettering the condition of the coloured family. Carpenters appeared from New Orleans. Materials were dragged through the country behind mules. Decorations were shipped from New York. The tottering shack came down and a splendid country bungalow was reared in its place. The interior was furnished with a lavish hand and with a total disregard for expense. White pillars supported the roof. Old-fashioned fireplaces were built into the walls and plate-glass windows were set into the doors. The floors were paved with concrete, and a handsome bath room was fitted up for the amazed and awe-stricken family. When he had finished the home, the young man turned his attention to its inmates. He bought them clothes—such clothes as they had never before dreamed of. He provided them with toilet articles and trifling luxuries, and, before he went away, he supplied the larder with enough food to last a year. That negro family is still the talk of the entire state in which it lives and its members regard what has happened as a manifestation from on high. The young man in search of interesting occupation parted from twenty thousand of his innumerable dollars and probably thinks of the whole affair with satisfaction.

An Italian savant and student has visited America. He has set down his opinions and some of them are interesting. He finds, for instance, that the wife of one of our foremost millionaires wears a necklace that cost more than six hundred thousand dollars. The infant son of this favoured lady reposed, during his tenderer years, in a cradle that was valued at ten thousand dollars and immediately following the birth of the boy—an event that was flashed by telegraph to the furthest corners of the earth—a retinue of servants was formed for the sole benefit of the infant. This corps of retainers consisted of four nurse ladies, four high-priced physicians, who examined the child four times a day, and posted serious bulletins for the information of the clamant press and public.

Another child came to another family, and Fifth Avenue trotted past the birthplace with bated breath and curious eyes. When the boy came to that stage of his development wherein the salutary bottle could be dispensed with, he was clothed in dignity and provided with a staff of personal attendants consisting of two able cooks, six grooms, three coachmen, two valets, and one governess. He grew in health and strength and to-day he manages a railway with acumen and success.

A gentleman of improvident habits and few dollars packed his meagre belongings in a hand bag and departed for the West. Subsequently, he achieved fortune and fame and came into possession of a gold mine, the ledges of which soon placed his name high in the ranks of America’s millionaires. Overcome by gratitude, he gave a commemorative dinner party in the sombre depths of the kindly mine. The space devoted to the festivities was forty feet wide and seventy feet long. One hundred guests assembled in the bowels of the mine and sat down to a sumptuous feast. The waiters were clad in imitation of miners. They hovered about attentively with oil lamps flaring from their foreheads. Picks and shovels decorated the uneven walls, and the various courses were lowered from the mouth of the mine in the faithful cage that had carried up to the grateful millionaire his many dollars. A band discoursed sweet music and the bill was some fourteen thousand dollars.

A man of common name, but of uncommon wealth, decided to have a home in New York City. He purchased the palace of a friend who had died and paid for it two million dollars, which was popularly supposed to be one half the original cost of the pile. On his garden, to make space for which he tore down a building that had cost a hundred thousand, the new owner spent five hundred thousand dollars. His bedstead is of carved ivory and ebony, inlaid with gold. It cost two hundred thousand dollars. The walls are richly carved and decorated with enamel and gold; they cost sixty-five thousand dollars. On the ceiling, the happy millionaire expended twenty thousand in carvings, enamels, and gold, and ten pairs of filmy curtains, costing two thousand a pair, wave in the morning breeze. The wardrobe in this famous bedroom represents an outlay of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars and the dressing table sixty-five thousand. The wash stand cost thirty-eight thousand, and the bed hangings, fifty dollars a yard. The chimney-piece and overhanging mantel threw into general circulation eight thousand more, and the four doors consumed another ten thousand.

A wealthy lover of music paid the highest price ever recorded for a piano. It was no ordinary piano. Its price was fifty thousand dollars. For a single painting a Westerner paid fifty-five thousand dollars. Another collector, whose name is known in the humblest homes, expended fifty thousand dollars for a silver trinket only four inches high.

An enthusiastic American happened to live in London at the time the North Pole was discovered. For an indefinite period of time the North Pole was seemingly discovered by two Americans. That controversy is ended and dead, but the memory of the dinner given in London by the proud American will live for many years. Thirty guests accepted the invitations, and, upon entering the home of their host, found themselves in a barren and icy waste. The prow of an ice-bound ship protruded from one side of the wall. Pale electric lights flashed coldly from a score of points. Icebergs towered above the dinner table, surmounted by polar bears. In the centre of the room was a huge oval table to represent a solid block of ice and thereon the brilliant feast was served. The waiters moved about noiselessly in the costumes of Eskimos, hooded in the skins of animals and clad in the white fur of polar bears. The dinner was a tremendous success. It cost the American ten thousand dollars and not one word of criticism was passed, except by the suffering waiters in their heavy furs on a warm mid-summer day.

A wealthy mining man wagered upon the outcome of an election and lost. He proceeded to pay his bet by giving a dinner in his stables. Thirty-five guests appeared and prepared to enjoy themselves to the fullest. The table was arranged in the shape of a horseshoe, and the waiters were jockeys in silken jackets and long peak caps. During the enthusiastic scenes that followed, the favourite horse of the host was admitted to the banquet room from his near-by box stall and diverted the guests by eating the flowers, with which the banquet table was heavily laden, and by drinking champagne from the punch-bowl. Tiny Shetland ponies trotted and pranced about the diners and the favourite steed became mildly intoxicated from the champagne and was ridden about the room by hilarious men. The entire dinner was the exact opposite of monotony. It cost the loser of the bet twelve thousand dollars.

A famous ten thousand dollar dinner was given in the heart of the tired old metropolis. The table was laid out as an oval and over its smooth surface costly flowers were spread in deep layers. In the centre was a lake of limpid water, suspended from the ceiling by gold wire network. Four white swans swam about during the progress of the banquet. From various rings in the ceiling hung golden cages containing rare song birds that twittered incessantly and the guests ate fruit from the branches of dwarf trees especially provided and at a cost that might seem staggering to the commonplace man of little wealth.