III

Lights and Shadows of American Society


By "society" I do not mean that limited body which, whether as the
Upper Ten Thousand of London or as the Four Hundred of New York,
usually arrogates the title. Such narrowness of definition seems
peculiarly out of place in the vigorous democracy of the West. By
society I understand the great body of fairly well-educated and fairly
well-mannered people, whose means and inclinations lead them to
associate with each other on terms of equality for the ordinary
purposes of good fellowship. Such people, not being fenced in by
conventional barriers and owning no special or obtrusive privileges,
represent much more fully and naturally the characteristic national
traits of their country; and their ways and customs are the most
fruitful field for a comparative study of national character. The
daughters of dukes and princes can hardly be taken as typical English
girls, since the conditions of their life are so vastly different from
those of the huge majority of the species--conditions which deny a
really natural or normal development to all but the choicest and
strongest souls. So the daughter of a New York multimillionaire, who
has been brought up to regard a British duke or an Italian prince as
her natural partner for life, does not look out on the world through
genuinely American spectacles, but is biassed by a point of view which
may be somewhat paradoxically termed the "cosmopolitan-exclusive." As
Mr. Henry James puts it: "After all, what one sees on a Newport piazza