The English have, or they often express, an amiable notion of us as
enormously rich, and perhaps they think we are vain of our millionaires,
and would be flattered by an implication of wealth as common to us all
as our varying accent. But it is as hard for some of us to live up to a
full pocket as for others to live up to a full brain. It is hard even to
meet the expectation that you will know, or know about, our tremendously
moneyed people; but here is a curiosity which you do not have to inspire
before you gratify it, for it exists already, while as to our political
affairs, or even our military or naval affairs, not to speak of our
scientific or literary affairs, the curiosity that you gratify you must
first have inspired.

Their curiosity as to our riches does not judge the English, as might be
supposed. They are very romantic, with a young, lusty appetite for the
bizarre and the marvellous, as their taste in fiction evinces; and they
need not be contemned as sordid admirers of money because they wish to
know the lengths it can go to with the people who seem to be just now
making the most money. Their interest in a phenomenon which we ourselves
have not every reason to be proud of, is not without justification, as
we must allow if we consider a little, for if we consider, we must own
that our greatest achievement in the last twenty or thirty years has
been in the heaping up of riches. Our magnificent success in that sort
really eclipses our successes in every other, and the average American
who comes abroad must be content to shine in the reflected glory of
those Americans who have recently, more than any others, rendered our
name illustrious. If we do not like the fact all that we have to do is
to set about doing commensurate things in art, in science, in letters,
or even in arms.