t for their gift of yesterday's bread. The why so and why not of
this incident are my real subject. For Mr. Howells is merely a
particularly conspicuous instance of the kind of prosperity I have in
mind. We are all too much dazzled by the rare great fortunes. The newly
rich have spectacular ways with them. By dint of frequently passing us in
notorious circumstances, they give the impression of a throng. They are
much in the papers, their steam yachts loom large on the waters, they
divorce quickly and often, they buy the most egregious, old masters. By
such more or less innocent ostentations, a handful stretches into a
procession, much as a dozen sprightly supernumeraries will keep up an
endless defile of Macduff's army on the tragic stage. Let us admit that
some of the great wealth is more or less foolishly and harmfully spent; my
subject is not bank accounts, but people; and very wealthy people
constitute an almost negligible minority of the race. Their influence too
is much less potent than is supposed. A slightly vulgarizing tendency
proceeds from them, but in waves of decreasing intensity. Their vogue is
chiefly a _succes de scandale_. Sensible people will gape at the spectacle
without admiration, and even the reader of the society column in the
sensational newspapers keeps more critical detachment than he is usually
credited with. In any case neither the boisterous nor the shrinking
multimillionaire has any representative standing. He is not what a poor
person means by a rich person. Ask your laundress who is rich in your
neighborhood, and she will name all who live gently and do not have to
worry about next month's bills. True pragmatist, she sees that to be
exempt from any threat of poverty is to all intents and purposes to be
rich. Her classification ignores certain niceties, but corresponds roughly
to the fact, and has the merit of corresponding to government decree. Rich
people, since the income tax, are officially those who pay the tax but not
the surtax. Families with an income not less than four thousand dollars
nor more than twenty thousand comprise the harmless, middling rich. Let us
once for all admit that in the surtaxed classes there are many cases of
quite harmless wealth, while in the lower level of the rich, harmful
wealth will sometimes be found. Such exceptions do not invalidate the
general rule that all but a negligible fraction of the rich are included
in the first class of income taxpayers--on fro