The talk of equality is just as much nonsense in America as in every other
place under the sun. How can people be called equal when the Browns won't
know the Smiths! And the Van Brounckers won't know either, and Fifth Avenue
does not bow to the West Side, and everyone is striving to "go one better"
than his neighbour.

Station is as strictly defined as in England, where the village grocer's
daughter at Valmond no longer could speak to a school friend, a little
general servant who came to fetch treacle at the shop, when Pappa Grocer
bought a piano! So you see, Mamma, it is in human nature, whether you are
English or American, if you haven't a sense of humour. I suppose you have
to be up where we are for it all to seem nonsense and not to matter; and,
who knows? If there were another grade beyond us we might be just the same,
too; but it is trash to talk of equality. Even a Socialist leader thinks
himself above the crowd--and is, too, though I should imagine that the
American middle and lower classes would assert they have no equal but
God--if they don't actually look down on Him.

How I am rambling on, and I wanted to tell you heaps of things! I shall
never get them all into this letter.

When we arrived at this palace it was, as I say, raining, but that did not
prevent the marble steps from being decorated with three footmen at equal
distances to usher us into the care of a cabinet minister-looking butler,
and then through a porphyry hall hung with priceless tapestry and some
shockingly glaring imitation Elizabethan oak chairs--to the library, where
our hostess awaited us in a magnificent décollete tea gown, and at least
forty thousand pounds' worth of pearls. Natalie had the sweetest of frocks
possible and was quite simple and nice, and there is not the least