MONG MILLIONAIRES

Considering the truly magical power of money, it must often have struck
the meditative mind--particularly that class of meditative mind whose
wealth consists chiefly in meditation--to what thoroughly commonplace
uses the modern millionaire applies the power that is his: in brief,
with what little originality, with what a pitiful lack of imagination,
he spends his money. One seldom hears of his doing a novel or striking
thing with it.

On the contrary, he buys precisely the same things as his
fellow-millionaires, the same stereotyped possessions--houses in Fifth
Avenue and Newport, racehorses, automobiles, boxes at the opera,
diamonds and dancing girls; and whether, as the phrase is, he makes good
use of his wealth, or squanders it on his pleasures, the so-called good
or bad uses are alike drearily devoid of individuality. Philanthropist
or profligate, the modern millionaire is one and the same in his lack of
initiative. Saint or sinner, he is one or the other in the same tame
imitative way.

The rich men of the past, the splendid spendthrifts of antiquity, seem
usually to have combined a gift of fancy with their wealth, often even
something like poetry; and their extravagances, however extreme, had
usually a saving grace of personal whim to recommend them to lovers of
the picturesque. Sardanapalus and Heliogabalus may have been whatever
else you please, but they were assuredly not commonplace; and the mere
mention of their names vibrates with mankind's perennial gratitude for
splendour and colossal display, however perverse, and even absurd. The
princes of the Italian Renaissance were, of course, notable examples of
the rich man as fantast, probably because they had the good sense to
seek the skilled advice of poets and painters as to how best to make an
artistic display of their possessions. Alas, no millionaire today asks a
poet's or painter's assistance in spending his money; yet, were the
modern millionaire to do so, the world might once more be delighted with
such spectacles as Leonardo devised for the entertainments at the Villa
Medici--those fanciful banquets, where, instead of a mere vulgar display
of Medici money--"a hundred dollars a plate," so to say--whimsical wit
and beauty entered into the creation of the very dishes. Leicester's
famous welcoming of Elizabeth to Kenilworth was perhaps the last
spectacular "revel" of its kind to strike the imagination; though we
must not fail to reme