An artist who had lived many years of his life in Paris and London
was speaking the other day of a curious phase he had remarked in
our American life. He had been accustomed over there to have his
studio the meeting-place of friends, who would drop in to smoke and
lounge away an hour, chatting as he worked. To his astonishment,
he tells me that since he has been in New York not one of the many
men he knows has ever passed an hour in his rooms. Is not that a
significant fact? Another remark which points its own moral was
repeated to me recently. A foreigner visiting here, to whom
American friends were showing the sights of our city, exclaimed at
last: "You have not pointed out to me any celebrities except
millionaires. 'Do you see that man? he is worth ten millions.
Look at that house! it cost one million dollars, and there are
pictures in it worth over three million dollars. That trotter cost
one hundred thousand dollars,' etc." Was he not right? And does
it not give my reader a shudder to see in black and white the
phrases that are, nevertheless, so often on our lips?
This levelling of everything to its cash value is so ingrained in
us that we are unconscious of it, as we are of using slang or local
expressions until our attention is called to them. I was present
once at a farce played in a London theatre, where the audience went
into roars of laughter every time the stage American said, "Why,
certainly.
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