No wonder that this aristocracy of ours plumes itself on its importance, and takes itself seriously when it finds its slightest doings telegraphed from the Atlantic to the Pacific. It feels itself called to new efforts, for it understands with native shrewdness that the American people requires novelty and fresh entertainment, or it looks elsewhere. Accordingly it is beginning to be unfaithful to its marriage vows. Until within a recent period the husbands and wives of this vapid society have, much to the bewilderment of warm-blooded students of manners and morals, been satisfied to flirt and produce the appearance of infidelity, and yet only pretend. Now the divorce court and the whispered or public scandal bear frequent testimony to the fact that it is not so fashionable or “smart” as it used to be merely to make believe.
Was there ever a foreign court, when foreign courts were in their glory, where men and women were content merely to whisper and giggle behind a rubber-tree in order to appear vicious? It may be said at least that some of our fashionables have learned to be men and women instead of mere simpering marionettes. Still there was originality in being simpering marionettes: Marital infidelity has been the favorite excitement of every rotten aristocracy which the world has ever seen.
A manner of life of this description can scarcely be the ideal of the American people. Certainly neither George Washington, when he delivered his farewell address, nor Abraham Lincoln, on the occasion of his second inaugural, looked forward to the evolution of any such aristocracy as the fulfilment of the nation’s hopes. And yet this coterie of people has its representatives in all the large cities of the country, and there is no reason to doubt that in a short time the example set will be imitated to some extent, at least, and that one portion of the country will vie with another in extravagant social vanities and prodigal display on the part of a pleasure-seeking leisure class.