or at worst go by
trolley, and occupy the cheaper seats at the opera, and dance in small
and early assemblages, and live in seven-room-with-bath flats. Money must
not count at all in the choice of these elect and beautiful natures. The
question is, how shall we get the dense, unenlightened masses to regard
them as the best society; how teach the reporters to run after them, and
the press to chronicle their entertainments, engagements, marriages,
divorces, voyages to and from Europe, and the other facts which now so
dazzle the common fancy when it finds them recorded in the society
intelligence of the newspapers?"

"Yes, as General Sherman said when he had once advocated the restriction
of the suffrage and had been asked how he was going to get the consent
of the majority whose votes he meant to take away--'yes, that is the
devil of it.'"

We were silent for a time, and then we suggested, "Don't you think that
a beginning could be made by those real elite we have decided on
refusing to let associate with what now calls itself our best society?"

"But hasn't our _soi-disant_ best society already made that beginning
for its betters by excluding them?" our other self responded.

"There is something in what you say," we reluctantly assented, "but by
no means everything. The beginning you speak of has been made at the
wrong end. The true beginning of society reform must be made by the
moral, aesthetic, and intellectual superiors of fashionable society as we
now have it. The _grandes dames_ must be somehow persuaded that to be
really swell, really smart, or whatever the last word for the thing is,
they must search _Who's Who in New York_ for men and women of the most
brilliant promise and performance and invite them. They must not search
the banks and brokers' offices and lawyers' offices for their
dancing-men, but the studios, the editorial-rooms, the dramatic
agencies, the pulpits, for the most gifted young artists, assignment
men, interviewers, actors, and preachers, and apply to the labor-unions
for the cleverest and handsomest artisans; they must look up the most
beautiful and intelligent girl-students of all the arts and sciences,
and department stores for cultivated and attractive salesladies. Then,
when all such people have received cards to dinners or dances, it will
only remain for them to have previous engagements, and the true
beginning is made. Come! You can't say the thing is impossible."

"Not impossible,