A substantial portion of the entertaining that takes place on Fifth
Avenue is paid for out of pilfered money. Ten years ago this rhetorical
remark would have been sneered at as demagogic. To-day everybody knows
that it is simply the fact. Yet we continue to eat with entire unconcern
the dinners that have, as it were, been abstracted from the dinner-pails
of the poor. I cannot conduct an investigation into the business history
of every man who asks me to his house. And even if I know he has been a
crook, I cannot afford to stir up an unpleasantness by attempting in my
humble way to make him feel sorrow for his misdeeds. If I did I might
find myself alone--deserted by the rest of the aristocracy who are
concerned less with his morality than with the vintage of his wine and
the _dot_ he is going to give his daughter.

The methods by which a newly rich American purchases a place among our
nobility are simple and direct. He does not storm the inner citadel of
society but at the start ingratiates himself with its lazy and
easy-going outposts. He rents a house in a fashionable country suburb of
New York and goes in and out of town on the "dude" train. He soon learns
what professional people mingle in smart society and these he bribes to
receive him and his family. He buys land and retains a "smart" lawyer to
draw his deeds and attend to the transfer of title. He engages a
fashionable architect to build his house, and a society young lady who
has gone into landscape gardening to lay out his grounds. He cannot work
the game through his dentist or plumber, but he establishes friendly
relations with the swell local medical man and lets him treat an
imaginary illness or two. He has his wife's portrait painted by an
artist who makes a living off similar aspirants, and in exchange gets an
invitation to drop in to tea at the studio. He buys broken-winded
hunters from the hunting set, decrepit ponies from the polo players, and