Money
cover of maroon-coloured silk plush," and its panelled walls, "the work of a lady amateur of great ability" (I quote from a newspaper of 1890), now has to scurry round golf-links, and shiver on the outskirts of a polo-field. From him we learn that young New Yorkers, the least and lowest of whom lives in a nine-hundred-thousand-dollar house, play tennis and golf like champions, or "cut a wide swathe in polo circles with their fearless riding." From him we learn that "automobile racing can show its number of millionaires," as if it were at all likely to show its number of clerks and ploughmen. Extravagance may be the arch-enemy of efficiency, but it is, and has always been, the friend of aimless excess.
When I was young, and millionaires were a rarity in my unassuming town, a local divine fluttered our habitual serenity by preaching an impassioned sermon upon a local Crœsus. He was
237
