ing of this kind in the intercourse of the American
author with the American railroad magnate, it may be safely stated
that the general tone of society in America makes such an attitude
rare and unlikely. There social equality has become an instinct, and
the ruling note of good society is of pleasant cameraderie, without
condescension on the one hand or fawning on the other. "The democratic
system deprives people of weapons that everyone does not equally
possess. No one is formidable; no one is on stilts; no one has great
pretensions or any recognised right to be arrogant." (Henry James.)
The spirit of goodwill, of a desire to make others happy (especially
when it does not incommode you to do so), swings through a much larger
arc in American society than in English. One can be surer of one's
self, without either an overweening self-conceit or the assumption of
brassy self-assertion.

The main rock of offence in American society is, perhaps, its tendency
to attach undue importance to materialistic effects. Plain living with
high thinking is not so much of an American formula as one would wish.
In the smart set of New York, and in other places _mutatis mutandis_,
this shows itself in an appallingly vulgar and ostentatious display of
mere purchase power. We are expected to find something grand in the
fact that an entertainment costs so much; there is little recognition
of the truth that a man who spends $100 where $10 would meet all the
demands of good taste is not only a bad economist, but essentially
bourgeois and _torne_ in soul. Even roses are vulgarised, if that be
possible, by production in the almost obtrusively handsome variety
known as the "American Beauty," and by being heaped up like hay-stacks
in the reception rooms. At a recent fashionable marriage in New York
no fewer than 20,000 sprays of lily of the valley are reported to have
been used. A short time ago a wedding party travelled from Chicago to
Burlington (Iowa) on a specially constructed train which cost L100,000
to build; the fortunes of the heads of the few families represented
aggregated L100,000,000. The private drawing-room cars of millionaires
are _too_ handsome; they do not indicate so much a necessity of taste
as a craving to spend. Many of the best hotels are characterised by a
tasteless magnificence which annoys rather than attracts the artistic
sense. At one hotel I stayed at in a fashionable watering-place the
cheapest bedroom cost L1 a night;