young human seedlings planted "in society," the main point of interest lies
in the discovery which of these are likely to grow into oaks.

But the truth is that the very use of the word "society" in this sense is
narrow and misleading. We Americans are fortunate enough to live in a
larger society, where no conventional position or family traditions exert
an influence that is to be in the least degree compared with the influence
secured by education, energy, and character. No matter how fastidious the
social circle, one is constantly struck with the limitations of its
influence, and with the little power exerted by its members as compared
with that which may easily be wielded by tongue and pen. No merely
fashionable woman in New York, for instance, has a position sufficiently
important to be called influential compared with that of a woman who can
speak in public so as to command hearers, or can write so as to secure
readers. To be at the head of a normal school, or to be a professor in a
college where co-education prevails, is to have a sway over the destinies
of America which reduces all mere "social position" to a matter of cards
and compliments and page's buttons.




THE BATTLE OF THE CARDS


The great winter's contest of the visiting-cards recommences at the end of
every autumn. Suspended during the summer, or only renewed at Newport and
such thoroughbred and thoroughly sophisticated haunts, it will set in with
fury in the habitable regions of our cities before the snow falls. Now will
the atmosphere of certain streets and squares be darkened--or whitened--at