t in a society in which such gigantic sums
are spent in mere conventional ostentation which gives little or no
pleasure; in which the best London houses are those which are the
longest untenanted; in which some of the most enchanting gardens and
parks are only seen by their owners for a few weeks in the year.

Hamerton, in his Essay on Bohemianism, has very truly shown that the
rationale of a great deal of this is simply the attempt of men to obtain
from social intercourse the largest amount of positive pleasure or
amusement it can give by discarding the forms, the costly
conventionalities, the social restrictions that encumber and limit it.
One of the worst tendencies of a very wealthy society is that by the
mere competition of ostentation the standard of conventional expense is
raised, and the intercourse of men limited by the introduction of a
number of new and costly luxuries which either give no pleasure or give
pleasure that bears no kind of proportion to their cost. Examples may
sometimes be seen of a very rich man who imagines that he can obtain
from life real enjoyment in proportion to his wealth and who uses it
for purely selfish purposes. We may find this in the almost insane
extravagance of vulgar ostentation by which the parvenu millionaire
tries to gratify his vanity and dazzle his neighbours; in the wild round
of prodigal dissipation and vice by which so many young men who have
inherited enormous fortunes have wrecked their constitutions and found a
speedy path to an unhonoured grave. They sought from money what money
cannot give, and learned too late that in pursuing shadows they missed
the substance that was within their reach.

To the intelligent millionaire, however, and especially to those who are
brought up to great possessions, wealth is looked on in a wholly
different light. It is a possession and a trust carrying with it many
duties as well as many interests and accompanied by a great burden of
responsibility. Mere pleasure-hunting plays but a small and wholly
subsidiary part in such lives, and they are usually filled with much
useful work. This man, for example, is a banker on a colossal scale.
Follow his life, and you will find that for four days in the week he is
engaged in his office as steadily, as unremittingly as any clerk in his
establishment. He has made himself master not only of the details of his
own gigantic business but of the whole great subject of finance in all
its international