spirit, of genius, who have already achieved something in the world, but
they are outside the wall of money and she is inside it, and there is no
way for them to get in or for her to get out. She is permitted to know
only the _jeunesse dorée_--the fops, the sports, the club-window men,
whose antecedents are vouched for by the Social Register.

She has no way of meeting others. She does not know what the others are
like. She is only aware of an instinctive distaste for most of the young
fellows among whom she is thrown. At best they are merely innocuous when
they are not offensive. They do nothing; they intend never to do
anything. If she is the American girl of our plays and novels she wants
something better; and in the plays and novels she always gets him--the
dashing young ranchman, the heroic naval lieutenant, the fearless
Alaskan explorer, the tireless prospector or daring civil engineer. But
in real life she does not get him--except by the merest fluke of
fortune. She does not know the real thing when she meets it, and she is
just as likely to marry a dissipated groom or chauffeur as the young
Stanley of her dreams.

The saddest class in our social life is that of the thoroughbred
American girl who is a thousand times too good for her de-luxe
surroundings and the crew of vacuous la-de-da Willies hanging about her,
yet who, absolutely cut off from contact with any others, either
gradually fades into a peripatetic old maid, wandering over Europe, or
marries an eligible, turkey-trotting nondescript--"a mimmini-pimmini,
Francesca da Rimini, _je-ne-sais-quoi_ young man."

The Atlantic seaboard swarms in summertime with broad-shouldered,
well-bred, highly educated and charming boys, who have had every
advantage except that of being waited on by liveried footmen. They camp