nd has become a race of angels the
hideous problem of human suffering can never be solved by vesting
private property-rights in the hands of public functionaries. But the
note of anguish in that voice of desperation and revolt need not, for
all this, be confused with its madder strains. The claim of poverty
upon riches is to-day a tremendously ethical one. Help--and help wise,
earnest, persistent--is the inflexible moral tax levied by life itself
on all who have an overplus of wealth wherewith to relieve deserving
misery. The occasional careless signing of a cheque, or even a visit
now and then among the filthy slums of Bayard and Hester Streets,
cannot cancel these mighty obligations. And there are better ways of
schooling the soul to recognize the magnitude and insistence of such
obligations than by organizing ultra-select dancing-classes at
Sherry's; giving "pink luncheons" to a bevy of simpering female snobs;
uncorking eight-dollar bottles of Clos de Vougeot for a fastidious
dinner company of men-about-town; squandering three thousand dollars
on a Delmonico ball, or purchasing at vast prices the gowns and jewels
of a deposed foreign empress. Yes, there are better ways. And for
people who are solely pleasure-seekers to call themselves Christian
is, from their own points of view, blasphemy unspeakable; since
whatever we agnostics may say and believe about the alleged "divinity"
of Christ, _they_ hold that the Galilean was the son of God, and that
in such miraculous character he spoke when saying: "Leave all and
follow me."

The American snob is a type at once the most anomalous and the most
vulgar. Why he is anomalous need not be explained, but the essence of
his vulgarity lies in his entire absence of a sanctioning background.
It is not, when all is said, so strange a matter that anyone reared in
an atmosphere of historic ceremonial and precedent should betray an
inherent leaning toward shams and vanities. But if there is anything
that we Americans, as a race, are forever volubly extolling, it is our
immunity from all such drawbacks. And yet I will venture to state that
in every large city of our land snobbery and plutocracy reign as twin
evils, while in every small town, from Salem to some Pacific-slope
settlement, the beginnings of the same social curse are manifest. Of
course New York towers in bad eminence over the entire country. Abroad
they are finding out the absurd shallowness of our professions. Nearly
seve