because he wants to and not to be a good fellow. A total abstainer finds
himself perfectly at home anywhere.

Of course the fashionables, if they are going to set the pace, have to
hit it up in order to head the procession. The fastness of the smart set
in England is notorious, and it is the same way in France, Russia,
Italy, Germany, Scandinavia--the world over; and as society tends to
become unified mere national boundaries have less significance. The
number of Americans who rent houses in London and Paris, and shooting
boxes in Scotland, is large.

Hence the moral tone of Continental society and of the English
aristocracy is gradually becoming more and more our own. But with this
difference--that, as the aristocracy in England and Continental Europe
is a separate caste, a well-defined order, having set metes and bounds,
which considers itself superior to the rest of the population and views
it with indifference, so its morals are regarded as more or less its own
affair, and they do not have a wide influence on the community at large.

Even if he drinks champagne every night at dinner the Liverpool pickle
merchant knows he cannot get into the king's set; but here the pickle
man can not only break into the sacred circle, but he and his fat wife
may themselves become the king and queen. So that a knowledge of how
smart society conducts itself is an important matter to every man and
woman living in the United States, since each hopes eventually to make a
million dollars and move to New York. With us the fast crowd sets the
example for society at large; whereas in England looseness in morals is
a recognized privilege of the aristocracy to which the commoner may not
aspire.