Читать книгу The Champagne Standard - John Mrs. Lane - Страница 4

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The other evening at a charming dinner party in London, and in that intimate time which is just before the men return to the drawing room, I found myself tête-à-tête with my genial hostess. She leaned forward and said with a touch of anxiety in her pretty eyes, "Confess that I am heroic?"

"Why?" I asked, somewhat surprised.

"To give a dinner party without champagne."

It was only then that I realised that we had had excellent claret and hock instead of that fatal wine which represents, as really nothing else does, the cheap pretence which is so humorously characteristic of Modern Society.

"You see," she said with a deep sigh, "I have a conscience, and I try to reconcile a modest purse and the hospitality people expect from me, and that is being very heroic these days, and it does so disagree with me to be heroic! Besides, people don't appreciate your heroism, they only think you are mean!"

I realised at once the truth and absurdity of what she said. It does require tremendous heroism to have the courage of a small income and to be hospitable within your means, for by force of bad example hospitality grows dearer year by year. The increasing extravagance of life is all owing to those millionaires, and imitation millionaires, whose example is a curse and a menace. They set the pace, and the whole world tears after. Because solely of their wealth, or supposed wealth, they are accepted everywhere, and it is they who have broken down the once impassable barriers between the English classes, with the result that the evil which before might have been confined to the highest, now that extravagant imitation is universal, permeates all ranks even to the lowest.

The old aristocracy is giving place to the new millionaires, and it gladly bestows on them its friendship in exchange for the privilege of consorting with untold wealth and possible hints on how to make it. The dignity that hedges about royalty is indeed a thing of the past, since a bubble king of finance is said to have been too busy to vouchsafe an audience to an emperor.

There is nothing in the modern world so absolutely real and convincing and universal as its pretence. It has set itself a standard of aims and of living which can best be described as the Champagne Standard.

To live up to the champagne standard you have to put your best foot foremost, and that foot is usually a woman's. It is the women who are the arbiters of the essentially unimportant in life, the neglect of which is a crime. It is the women who have set the champagne standard. A man who lays a great stress on the importance of trivialities has either a worldly woman behind him, or he has a decided feminine streak in his character.

Yes, it is the champagne standard; for nothing else so accurately describes the insincere, pretentious, and frothy striving after one's little private unattainables. It is aspiration turned sour. Aspirations, real and true, keep the world progressive, make of men great men and of women great women; but it is the minor aspirations after what we have not got, what the accident of circumstances prevents us from having, which make of life a weariness and a profound disappointment. Not the tragedies of life make us bitter, but the pin-pricks.

In America, for instance, one does not need to be so very old to be aware of the amazing changes in the ways of living, the result of an unbalanced increase of wealth which has brought with it the imported complexity of older and more aristocratic countries. It is the older civilisation's retaliation against those blustering new millions that have done her such incalculable harm. Indeed, it would have been well for the great republic had she put an absolutely prohibitive tariff on the fatal importation. The republican simplicity of our fathers is slowly vanishing in the blind, mad struggle of modern life—in a standard of living that is based on folly. It is easier to imitate the old-world luxury than the old-world cultivation which mellows down the crudeness of wealth and makes it an accessory and not the principal. Unfortunately we judge a nation by those of its people who are most in evidence, and do it the injustice of over-looking the best and finest types among its wealthiest class: men and women who are the first to regret and disown what is false and unworthy in their social life. We assume that the blatant, self-advertising nouveau riche, with whom wealth is the standard of success and virtue, is the national American type, instead of the worst of many types, whose bad example is as well recognised as a peril to character in America as in other countries. Wealth in all nations covers a multitude of sins, but in America, to judge from recent developments, it would seem to cover crimes. Is not America now passing through a gigantic struggle, the result of the hideous modern fight for wealth, in which the common man goes under, while the reckless speculators who juggled with his hard-earned savings use these same savings to fight justice to the bitter end? Possibly in no other enlightened country in the world could such titanic frauds, with such incalculably far-reaching effects, be so successfully attempted, and that by a handful of men who had in their keeping the hopes of countless unsuspecting people who trusted to their honesty and uprightness.

The race for wealth in America has become a madness—a disease. It is not a love of wealth for what it will bring into life, of beauty and goodness, but a love of millions pure and simple. Who has not seen the effect of millions on the average human character? Who has not seen men grow hard and rapacious in proportion as their millions accumulated? Who has not seen the tendency to judge of deeds and virtue by the same false standard? A shady transaction performed by a millionaire is condoned because he is a millionaire and for no other reason. Without millions he would be shunned, but with them he is regarded with the eyes of a most benevolent charity. It is high time indeed that a prophet should arise and preach the simple life, but let him not preach it from below upwards. He must preach it to the kings of the world and the billionaires and magnates, and above all to the lady magnates; and let him be sure not to forget the lady magnates, for they are of the supremest importance and set the fashion. Let him turn them from their complicated ways. Now the ways of magnates and all who belong to them are very instructive. The well-authenticated story goes that at a dinner party the other night at a magnate's,—to describe his indescribable importance it is sufficient to call a man a magnate—after the ladies returned to the drawing-room, the hostess, her broad expanse tinkling and glittering with diamonds, leaned back in a great tufted chair—just like a throne en déshabille—and shivered slightly. A footman went in search of the lady's maid.

"Françoise," said the magnate's lady with languid magnificence, "I feel chilly; bring me another diamond necklace."

Yes, let the prophet first convert the magnate and the magnate's "lady" to a simpler life, then the simple life will undoubtedly become the fashion, for the small fry will follow soon enough. Are we not all like sheep? And what is the use of arguing with sheep who are leaping after the bellwether?

There is one safeguard for the American republic, and that is, in default of any other description, its ice-water-drinking class. In its ice-water-drinking class lies its safety, for that represents the backbone of the republic. It represents a class which, in spite of the sanitary drawbacks of ice, is a national asset. It seems curious to boast of the people who drink ice-water, and yet they represent American life, simple, sincere, and untouched by the sophistries of the champagne standard, and of a social ambition imported from abroad; decently well off people, but not so well off but that the only heritage of their sons will be a practical education. Already we are reaping the curse of inherited wealth in America, where, unlike England, it has no duties to keep the balance. The English aristocrat has inherited political duties and responsibilities towards his country which, as a rule, he faithfully performs, and which make of him a hard-working man. Unfortunately it is the fashion for the rich American, in his race for wealth and pleasure, or out of sheer indolence, to ignore politics and all that is of vital importance in national life. And until the best elements of the nation take a practical interest in the government of their country and in the administration of its great institutions, the nation cannot reach its highest development. Just now, unhappily, we have a warning example of what happens in America to the second generation that inherits instead of makes incalculable wealth. The District Attorney of New York, in a case which has shaken the foundation of all commercial rectitude, is quoted as saying of the still young man whom the accident of inheritance placed in a position of despotic power over millions of money and millions of modest hopes: "He is an excellent type of the second generation." It is an epigram which should be a warning, as the cause is a menace to American business methods. For did not Emerson say, studying American ways more than a generation ago when American life was simpler: "It takes three generations from shirt-sleeves to shirt-sleeves." But in that warning there is hope, for in the scattering of wealth lies America's chance of salvation. Plain living and high thinking once characterised what was best in American life, and the men and women whose thoughts were high and whose living plain were mostly from that simple ice-water-drinking class that has produced much of the nobility and patriotism of America. That ice-water has helped to encourage dyspepsia, granted; but even a great virtue can have its defects.

How different was the America of our childhood! One remembers the time when, if the honoured guest was not invited to quench his thirst with ice-water at the hospitable board, he was, as a great treat, furnished with cider. Claret was the drink of those adventurous souls who had traditions and had been abroad. There was no champagne standard—champagne only graced the table on solemn, state occasions. But in these rapid days the hospitable people who would once have offered you a serious glass of claret now give you champagne. And because Smith, who can afford it, gives you good champagne, Jones, who cannot afford it, gives you bad champagne. But the bad and the good champagne are both tied up in white cloths, as if they had the toothache, so how awfully lucky it is that when the label is fifth-rate, Mrs. Jones, trusting in the shrouded shape, can offer bad champagne with ignorant satisfaction.

It is interesting to study the evolution of Jones. There was Jones's father; he didn't pretend. He lived in a modest house and kept one servant and had a fat bank account. Old Mrs. Jones, a charming woman with the manners of a duchess, helped in the housework. Old Jones dined all the days of his life at one o'clock, and had a "meat-tea" at six. At ten every night he ate an apple, and then he went to bed at ten-thirty. He left a handsome fortune to his children, who shared alike, which made Jones, Jr., only comfortably off. Now young Jones and his wife began by following in the footsteps of their parents, but Jones made money in business, and the result was that Mrs. Jones had aspirations. Aspirations are always a feminine attribute. So Jones bought a fashionable house, and instead of one servant Mrs. Jones keeps four; instead of a joint and pie, American pie, for which his simple appetite longs, Jones has a six-course dinner at eight which gives him dyspepsia. There is not the ghost of a doubt that Mrs. Jones is too afraid of the servants to have a plain dinner. And it is also quite certain that she goes to a fashionable church for a social impetus rather than divine uplifting, and that she sends her only child, Petra Jones, to a fashionable kindergarten so that the unfortunate child, who is at an age when she ought to be making mud pies, shall be early launched into fashionable friendships. Indeed, one day, in a burst of confidence, Mrs. Jones described how Petra had been snubbed. It seems that the Jones's child met another small school-fellow in the park in custody of the last thing in French nurses. Being only six and still unsophisticated in the ways of fashion, she rushed up to the young patrician and suggested their playing together.

"No, I can't play with you," the young patrician sniffed—"for my ma don't call on your ma."

Why is it that the pin-pricks of life are so much harder to bear than its tragedies? Mrs. Jones mourned over this snub to the pride of Jones, but she has no leisure to observe that Jones, her husband, is meanwhile growing old and hollow-eyed with care and business worries and the expense of aspiring. O champagne standard! O foolish Mrs. Jones!

As long as we can be snubbed and suffer what is the use of telling us that we are born free and equal? The only liberty we have is to breathe, and our equality consists in that, plebeian and patrician alike, we are permitted to take in as much air as our infant lungs can accommodate. After that our equality ceases.

When Mrs. Jones goes to the expense of giving a dinner party, does she only invite her nearest and dearest, who are acquainted with the extent of Jones's purse? Not a bit of it. She invites most of her enemies and some strangers. There really should be a limit to the attention one bestows on the stranger within his gates.

There was dear old Mrs. Carter Patterson in the days of my youth. She was a funny old woman with a nose like a beak, a rusty Chantilly lace veil, and a black front. She stopped my mother in the street and explained that she was in a tearing hurry as she was about to call on Mrs. Mangles.

"Why, I thought," and my simple mother hesitated, "I thought you said you hated her."

"So I do, my dear, so I do, but I always make a point of calling on my enemies, it's no use calling on one's friends."

Who has not studied the increasing difficulty of that surgical operation called the launching of a young girl into modern society. Every year it grows more and more difficult—society seems to form a kind of trust to keep out the young girl, at least to judge from the extreme difficulty of getting her in; and after she is in, the bitterness of it, and vexation of spirit, only the young girl knows. The operation is different in different countries, though one has heard of the agonies endured in England during the process. In America the ceremony is as expensive as a wedding. Because one girl has had a huge coming-out reception, that shakes her pa's cheque book to its centre, why the other girl must have a still bigger one.

I have been a witness to the coming out of Maria's only child Nancy. The education of Nancy was not so much to teach her anything, as to give her the best opportunity of making fashionable acquaintances. It was my privilege to study her mother's heroic efforts to get Nancy into a fashionable dancing-school, the entrance to which gave the fortunate one that supreme distinction which nothing else could. Twice "mother" failed, and she wept in my presence in sheer weariness of soul, but the third time Nancy got in—not triumphantly, but she slipped in by some oversight of a fashionable matron whose duty it was to keep out ineligible little children, and "mother" was happy, though the little "400" boys in the round dances did neglect Nancy, who looked shyly and wistfully about, a small melancholy wall-flower, with her eyes swimming with tears, as the little boys wisely footed it with all the most eligible of the "400" little girls. It is very instructive to see how early the sense of worthy worldly wisdom develops itself!

But Nancy had passed through all these stages of social martyrdom, and had comfortably hardened. Talk of the Spartan boy with the fox nibbling at his vitals! There are worse things than having a fox nibble at your vitals—Nancy knew.

When I met "mother" the morning of the coming-out of Nancy, she was nearly in a condition of nervous prostration. The house was in the clutches of florists and caterers, and father had fled to his office with the strict injunction not to appear until late in the afternoon. The awful problems were two: Would Nancy get as many bouquets as a rival "bud"—the technical name for a debutante—who had reached the acme of social distinction with two hundred and thirty-five, and would enough people come to make a show?

"I shall die if she doesn't get as many bouquets as that Bell girl," "mother" cried in an ecstasy of nervous anguish, "but she has only got two hundred and ten."

"It's as bad as getting married," I cried sympathetically.

"Quite," and Maria groaned; "and without any real result."

Between a confusion of carpet covering and potted plants I went upstairs in search of the "bud."

"Only two hundred and ten bouquets," she cried in a tempest of discontent, "and Betty Bell (the rival bud) is to have a five-thousand-dollar ball and I am not! Mother says it isn't giving the ball she'd mind, but it's people not coming. It's easy enough sending out invitations, but the mean thing is, people accept and don't come. That's the latest fashion," cried this bitter "bud." "Mother said she'd be mortified to death to give a ball and have nobody but the waiters to drink up the champagne. We're of just enough importance to have our invitations accepted and thrown over if anything better turns up."

Such was her perfectly justifiable wail.

That afternoon at six I came again in my best clothes. A reception is after all the simplest of social functions. It entails no obligations, and is as democratic as an electric car. It is perhaps one of the few functions in which even the noblest society may use its elbows, and as a school for staring, the kind that sees through the amplest human body as if it were mere air, nothing could be more useful and practical. It is an interesting study to observe how the female lorgnette is on such occasions so triumphant an impediment to sight.

Well, the whole street proclaimed the coming-out of Nancy. Carriages lined the curbstones and an awning announced the festive nature of the occasion. A band, crowded into a cubby-hole usually sacred to "father's" overcoats and umbrellas, tried vainly to penetrate the talk—there was a dense crush of human beings, and over all there was a mixed aroma of hot air, flowers, and coffee. At the top of the "parlour," before a bank of flowers, and burdened with bouquets, stood Nancy, all in expensive white simplicity, her face radiant, and supported by an utterly exhausted mother. Six young men who served as ushers, in collars tall enough for a giraffe, brought up relays of friends to be introduced to mother and "bud"—all just like a wedding, only the hero was wanting, and for "mother's" sake one did wish the occasion had had a hero. Last year's "buds" were brought up and examined this year's "bud," and there was a great deal of chatter and hand-shaking, of the pump-handle kind, and a pushing past each other of magnificent matrons in the latest things in hats.

I was escorted up by one of the young giraffes, who solemnly introduced me. A mighty different "bud" this from the one of the morning.

"I've got two hundred and forty bouquets," she whispered triumphantly; and just then I caught mother's weary eye and knew as absolutely as one knows anything in this uncertain world that "father" had sent in thirty. Really, there is nothing so loving, so generous and so weak in this wide world as an American father.

I was swept on by a crush of prosperous matrons accompanied by expensively simple daughters—the matrons making obviously disparaging mental criticisms about each other's daughters. For real simple, unassuming jealousy there is nothing like rival mothers! So I was pushed into the dining-room where the chief ornaments were four Gibson girls in party frocks who, at a flower-laden centre-table, in the mellow light of rose-shaded candles, dispensed glances, coffee, smiles, and tea, and other frivolous afternoon refreshments. They had the best of it, these beautiful young things at the table, especially when they could annex an occasional man.

At half past seven the last visitor had gone, the function was over and Nancy was "out," and "mother" sat drearily on a couch which had the demoralised air of furniture horribly out of place. Everything drooped except those stalwart American beauty roses, so costly, so splendid, so hard, and so unromantic. O national flower of Americans!

I caught a glimpse of "father" vanishing down the front steps on his way to the club. Nancy had flung herself into a big deep chair, and from this point she looked coldly at "mother."

"The Perkinses did not come," was all she said, but "mother" gave a start and groaned. The Perkinses represented the bloom of the occasion, and the Perkinses had not come. There was nothing further to be said—Maria did remark that it was as expensive as a wedding. "And to think it isn't dinner time yet," she added drearily.

"At any rate Nancy is 'out,'" I said.

"But it was horribly expensive."

"Well, then, what did you have all this expense and bother for?"

"One has to do it," she cried in stony despair; "it's our standard—"

"Champagne standard," I interrupted.

"I don't know what you mean." Maria has all the virtues, but no sense of humour.

"Then, for goodness' sake, why have her come out at all?"

Maria shuddered and looked cautiously about. Nancy had vanished.

"I'd die of mortification if she didn't marry. I won't have her turn on me and say I hadn't given her a chance."

"But, Maria, you married your good and prosperous Samuel without coming out. That didn't frighten him away! The highest standard your parents ever aspired to was cider, and that only on state occasions."

"That is all changed," said my unhappy friend. "We have got to—"

"Pretend; that's just it, Maria! But why don't you give up pretending and be happy? Did our parents ever pretend? They didn't. Think of your father's simple home and his big bank account, and then think of your Samuel with all his expenses and his cares."

But Maria was not to be convinced by argument—she was completely crushed by the Perkinses not having come, and she declared obstinately that her supreme duty in life was to get Nancy married—well if possible, but at any rate married.

Maria is only a type, but she stands for aspirations in the wrong place, and she is worn out with it. She has many virtues—that is, she has no vices. Her whole soul is wrapped up in Nancy. Nancy is her religion. She believes in Nancy, though she never took her Samuel seriously. She married him in the simple period of her existence, and by the time she began to aspire she had other ideals, and Samuel was more of a bore to her than an ideal. Samuel did not take to her new aspirations as readily as she. Men never do. Nancy constituted her romance; and yet she was an impartial mother, for mothers can be divided in two classes, those who are too partial and those who are impartial. Her mission in life was to marry off Nancy.

"I'd rather she'd be married unhappily than not at all," she said to me one day when I saw her again. "A real unhappiness is more healthy to bear than an imaginary one."

Nancy herself furnished the particulars of her own private creed.

"I'd rather be married even if I were unhappy. It's my own unhappiness, and I want my own whatever it is."

I suggested that there were other aims in life than getting married.

"Perhaps," she said, "but I haven't any. I've been brought up to that. Most girls are, only they don't tell. I haven't to earn my living and I haven't any talent for anything. If I don't marry, Ma'll be mortified to death and she'll show it and that'll make me mad. Father won't care and he won't notice that I'm growing older, though we girls don't grow old prettily. We get pinched, and our little hands—for we have little hands—grow clawy, and our hair gets thin at the temples, and we have too much gold in our front teeth. Of course we are real pretty when we are happy. But think of spending life seeing father go to sleep after dinner, and mother playing patience—ugh! I've told mother if she doesn't take me abroad I'll go slumming. There's no chance here. Half the men are too busy making money to get married and the others are afraid."

"So this is your education," I said later on to Maria; "I am glad you have only one child."

"So am I," said Maria wearily, "for two would kill me."

Then in a burst of confidence: "She hangs fire. She isn't strikingly plain nor strikingly beautiful, one's about as good as the other. She has no accomplishments, and her golf is only so so. She isn't fast, nor loud, nor smart. She is just an average girl and," Maria cried in vexation, "there are such heaps of them. The luncheons and dinners and theatre parties I have given without result! It is so tiresome for her always to be bridesmaid. So we're going abroad. Father is willing to live at the Club. Our men are too comfortable to get married. It's simply wicked!"

"Maria," I said from my inmost conviction, "you have manœuvred, with the result that you have frightened off the eligibles—struggling eligibles, and those are sometimes the best. But what struggler would dare to ask a champagne-standard girl to keep his "flat"? It's flats these days. He wouldn't think of dragging a white-tulled angel from a palatial residence to a flat and a joint! You have frightened off the young men. Marriage is getting out of fashion, and so are the comforts of a home. It's all your fault, you champagne-standard mothers!"

Such was the coming-out of Nancy.

Now in my young days there was certainly no formal coming-out. All I remember is that one day I still wore my hair in two pigtails, and the next day old Mrs. Barnett Pendexter called. She was a fumbly old woman with her fingers, and by accident—my sisters always declared—she left two cards instead of one. The fatal result was that my pigtails were pinned up and I was dragged out by my mother when she made calls, for she declared, being socially learned, that now I was undoubtedly out. It was also a little surgical operation in a minor way, but compared to these days how simple and how inexpensive.

If one were asked which of the passions is the greatest force in modern Society, one could safely reply "jealousy." Jealousy makes the world go round. Don't we want what all our neighbours have, and don't we want it with all our might and main? If we want it badly enough crime will not stand in the way of getting it. Is it not at the bottom of most of our defalcations, embezzlements, and commercial dishonesty in general? The bank president who borrows the bank funds for his private use, the cashier who falsifies the books, the little clerk who embezzles as the result of expensive tastes,—are they not all the results of the falsity and extravagance of modern life? Compared to the judicious business man who keeps just within the border line that saves him from the criminal law, and who lays traps for his credulous fellow-creatures in the shape of alluring companies, the pickpocket, who runs some little risk, is a blameless and worthy character. The champagne standard is the whole world's measure, and even justice bows to it when it interprets its laws for the rich and the poor. A company promoter, who in the course of his career has wrecked thousands of lives, can, if he is only rich enough, consort with the noblest and most virtuous of the land; but of course he must be rich enough. Deny it who can? Be rich enough and you are forgiven all crimes. O Champagne Standard!

Last year a certain deceased millionaire was tried in London for gigantic frauds, and all the newspapers described how pleasantly he greeted his friends when he entered the court and took his seat behind his counsel. Positively not a bit proud. There was also a sympathetic description of his clothes! The moral is, be a scoundrel on a magnificent scale and you are still respected; indeed, you even become a hero in some people's eyes. Justice being blindfolded cannot see, which is a great convenience. Besides, are we not taught that God helps those who help themselves?

In America there is no aristocracy yet, but God help it when the time arrives, for it will be an aristocracy based on the most unworthy of foundations—money. As for romantic traditions, well, it will take several centuries to weave a halo of romance around a pork-packer, a petroleum magnate, a railroad wrecker, or the company promoters who flourish as the green bay tree. In centuries they may arrive at the dignity of being ancestors—at present they are just what they are, and are to be judged accordingly.

There is a growing mania in America these days for ancestors. It is a luxury which can be indulged in only after people have accumulated money. If you are grubbing for your daily bread it is a matter of profound indifference to you where you came from, seeing what you have reached is so unsatisfactory. But when your bank-book bursts with deposits and your greed for money is partly satisfied, it is natural that you should look out for new fields for your aspirations. So wealthy Americans are just now very busy unearthing ancestors, in spite of not becoming parents, and getting their genealogical tree planted, and rummaging in the dust of the past for possible forefathers, and buying family portraits. Yes, there is a great trade in family portraits—the dingier the better. At any rate it keeps the pot boiling for many a worthy painter, and that is something. Not that one has a rooted aversion to ancestors—they are not to be despised if they leave you an honourable name, a nice old estate, and cash and some brains, but there are ancestors of whom the less said the better, and whose only legacy would appear to be a slanting forehead, a weak chin, and a tendency to unlimited viciousness.

The Herald's College could tell many a queer story of our sturdy republicans in search of their forbears. An English woman told me that a New York family had annexed a crusading forefather of her own, as well as one who had had his head chopped off, and to whom they had no more right than the grocer round the corner. She acknowledged that they were a pretty bad lot (the ancestors), but she objected to have strangers meddle with them. "You are funny republicans," she added genially, "coming over here and grabbing our ancestors."

Now there is nothing so frank as a frank Englishwoman. "What is the use of celebrated ancestors," she added, "if your whole present family are as dull as ditch-water and bore you to distraction? I'd swap off my crusading ancestor and my chopped-off-head one any time for a cousin with brains. But mind you, I don't want your American millionaires grabbing 'em without leave."

There are the Bedfords of New York. Susan and I went to school together. Hitherto she has put on no airs with me, for I know the family traditions, and that her excellent father began life as a cobbler. Then he forsook cobbling and started a corset manufactory, which was a distinguished success because he had invented a bone so like the whale's that even that clever fish could not have proved it wasn't his; and the deception made the old man's fortune. Thereupon he rose superior and soared from corsets to real estate, and in real estate he made what was briefly described as "mints." It was in the corset period that Susan married Joe Bedford who was a drummer in the business, and though he retired from corsets and went into real estate along with his father-in-law, Susan was always conscious that he could never accommodate himself to the grandeur of his new life. She had to do all the aspiring, and it was she who passed a sponge over their previous existence, and every time I saw them in New York she had added a new lustre to their glory. The last time the door was opened to me by a footman, brooded over, as it were, by the very noblest kind of English butler. I saw at once that the whole family were afraid to death of him. But in spite of her grandeur, Susan herself saw me downstairs to the front door, in the American fashion, though conscious of the profound and stony disapproval of the English butler. As I came opposite the hat rack I caught sight of a satin banner covered with cabalistic characters floating gently over Joe's modest bowler that swung from a peg.

"Our coat of arms," Susan explained by way of introduction. "Just come home. It cost a great deal; everything costs so much. We have the same arms as the Duke of Bedford. It is pleasant to have a duke in the family."

"Since when?" I asked, and stared in astonishment.

"I found them in the dictionary six months ago. I had it done at Tiffany's. It looks so stylish on the plates and the writing paper."

"Come in here, Susan," and I led her into her own parlour, for I did not wish to lower her in the estimation of that noble being who was preparing his mighty mind to show me out. "Listen to me; you and Joe haven't any more to do with the Duke of Bedford than the cat's foot. Besides, his name isn't Bedford but Russell. For goodness' sake don't make such an idiot of yourself."

"I guess," and Susan was deeply offended, "I guess the young man at Tiffany's knows more about it than you do. He engraves for the first families, and he said it was all right."

It was quite recently, too, that I crossed from Boston with three gentle female pilgrims in search of an ancestor. The youngest was nearly seventy, and we were barely out of sight of that famous tail of land called "Cape Cod" when they told me their simple story. They came from Cape Cod and their homestead stood on a sandhill and faced the sea. A long straggling street up a sand bank culminated in a meeting-house with a steeple as sharp as a toothpick. They were innocent and graphic old ladies and they had only two vivid interests in life; one was a Devonshire ancestor supposed to have died three hundred years before, and the other, two cats called respectively Priscilla and John Alden. The ancestor was the one romance of their placid lives, and it became a question of going to find him, now or never; so here they were. They had turned the key in the lock of their Cape Cod homestead and bidden a long farewell to Priscilla and John Alden, and as they described their grief I saw their three pairs of benevolent eyes fill with tears.

"The sweetest cats that ever breathed," said the oldest, with a face like a benediction.

"What did you do with them?" I asked after a sympathetic pause.

"We chloroformed them," said the dear old thing whose face was like a benediction.

I offered up an involuntary smile to the manes of these deceased martyrs, Priscilla and John Alden, and I am absolutely sure the ancestor wasn't worth the sacrifice.

Fortunately or unfortunately, the champagne standard, like hotel cooking, has no nationality. It is everywhere, and one studies it according to one's experience, but it is undoubtedly the curse of an age that only judges of success by material results. It is above everything a menace to character.

Modern life is the apotheosis of trivialities, and perhaps there is nothing more curious and melancholy than to observe their exaggerated importance to the world in general. One asks what is the use of such childish fretting to people confronted by tragic realities. What is the use of snubbing any one as if we were immortal? The truth is, each, in his own estimation, is immortal. Who thinks of dying? Why, if we expected to die at once, we certainly would not snub any one, and, in the face of so tragic a probability, we would not notice being snubbed. And yet there is absolutely nothing so absolutely certain as death, before which every pretence, every ignoble aspiration, every sordid ambition, stands naked and futile and, in some other world possibly, ashamed.

But one cannot help wondering what kind of a blissful place the world would be without the champagne standard. How good and honest we should be if we didn't pretend—how easy it would be to live! Are not most of the trials of life, apart from its tragedies, its results? Most of our harrowing anxieties usually have their rise in aiming at what is beyond our reach. And yet what, in the name of common sense, what is it all for? What is the use of pretending? What is the use of doing things badly when it is so much easier not to do them at all?

Yes, indeed, the greatest heroism in these days is to have the courage of one's income. It is possibly a little awkward at first, but what a relief to be able to say simply, "I can't afford it," and not lose caste! But Modern Society is ruled over by "Appearances." Appearances are a kind of Juggernaut which requires our happiness and peace and contentment as a daily sacrifice—but not the wise and honourable appearances, but the little, mean, false ones, and those are the most common.

One is inclined to think, however, that even the champagne standard may yet find its Nemesis. For if the world goes on at its present rate all its wealth will in time be swallowed up by the Trusts, and the Trusts will in turn be swallowed up by the mighty maws of the few whom God, in his righteous wrath, permits to plunder the earth, just as He once permitted a deluge for the regeneration of the world. And the blessed result will be that the whole wide world, being as poor as the traditional church mouse, will come to its senses, and the first thing that will happen will be the abolishing of the champagne standard. So herein lies the world's salvation, to be saved it must be ruined; and for the first time Trusts may be looked upon in the light of the benevolent saviours of mankind. When we are all as poor as the most plausible of them can make us, and that is saying a good deal, behold we shall then finally cease to pretend.

Of course each of us has his own ideal of the millennium, but with multi-millionaires setting the pace, and all the rest of the world racing after, it must be agreed that the millennium is not yet. But when it does come, there will be no more champagne standard, and each person will be judged after his honest value and not his purse. If he has a noble soul nobody will mind if he is a bit shabby, and if he is a man of brains he may even live at the wrong end of the town. In that happy day everybody will have the courage of his income, no matter how small, and when one is shown hospitality it will not be according to the champagne standard, but according to a standard of honest kindness; and no matter how simple it is, if it is only a crust of bread, no one will criticise, and no one will apologise. If in that blissful time Jones dines in a cut-away, why not? And yet is it not true in these days that Jones's fine character is often enough overlooked in a disapproving contemplation of his coat?

However, the millennium has not arrived, and the simpler life, though the fashion as a subject for sermons, is certainly not practised—as yet.

Recently a king of finance gave a great musical function—the gambols of the rich and great are always called functions. There were so many billionaires present that a modest millionaire was quite out of it. Everything was of the costliest, the lighting was entirely by radium, and the music provided was of an expense supremely worthy of even the consideration of billionaires. The very greatest violinist had been induced, by the offer of a small fortune, to play, and indeed, while he played, the host and another billionaire intimate amused themselves calculating the money value of each tone at the rate the great artist demanded for playing. Just as they finished, and he finished, and a languid murmur signified the approval of the glittering audience, the young daughter of the billionaire host, who had, apparently, not received the last polish in the school of unutterable wealth, put an entreating hand on her father's arm:

"Do please introduce me," and she mentioned a very famous name, "he does play so divinely."

"My child," and the magnate, who had started life peddling tripe, spoke with haughty disfavour and drew his eyebrows together in a frown, "we pay such people, but we don't know them."

O Champagne Standard!