CHAPTER 2 - The Moth and the Star


THE truth of the saying that "it is always the unexpected that
happens," receives in this country a confirmation from an unlooked-
for quarter, as does the fact of human nature being always,
discouragingly, the same in spite of varied surroundings. This
sounds like a paradox, but is an exceedingly simple statement
easily proved.

That the great mass of Americans, drawn as they are from such
varied sources, should take any interest in the comings and goings
or social doings of a small set of wealthy and fashionable people,
is certainly an unexpected development. That to read of the
amusements and home life of a clique of people with whom they have
little in common, whose whole education and point of view are
different from their own, and whom they have rarely seen and never
expect to meet, should afford the average citizen any amusement
seems little short of impossible.

One accepts as a natural sequence that abroad (where an hereditary
nobility have ruled for centuries, and accustomed the people to
look up to them as the visible embodiment of all that is splendid
and unattainable in life) such interest should exist. That the
home-coming of an English or French nobleman to his estates should
excite the enthusiasm of hundreds more or less dependent upon him