I pride myself on being a man of the world ­in the better sense of the phrase.  I feel no regret over the passing of those romantic days when maidens swooned at the sight of a drop of blood or took refuge in the “vapors” at the approach of a strange young man; in point of fact I do not believe they ever did.  I imagine that our popular idea of the fragility and sensitiveness of the weaker sex, based on the accounts of novelists of the eighteenth century, is largely a literary convention.

Heroines were endowed, as a matter of course, with the possession of all the female virtues, intensified to such a degree that they were covered with burning blushes most of the time.  Languor, hysteria and general debility were regarded as the outward indications of a sweet and gentle character.  Woman was a tendril clinging to the strong oak of masculinity.  Modesty was her cardinal virtue.  One is, of course, entitled to speculate on the probable contemporary causes for the seeming overemphasis placed on this admirable characteristic.  Perhaps feminine honesty was so rare as to be at a premium and modesty was a sort of electric sign of virtue.

I am not squeamish.  I have always let my children read what they would.  I have never made a mystery of the relations of the sexes, for I know the call of the unseen ­the fascination lent by concealment, of discovery.  I believe frankness to be a good thing.  A mind that is startled or shocked by the exposure of an ankle or the sight of a stocking must be essentially impure.  Nor do I quarrel with woman’s natural desire to adorn herself for the allurement of man.  That is as inevitable as springtime.

But unquestionably the general tone of social intercourse in America, at least in fashionable centers, has recently undergone a marked and striking change.  The athletic girl of the last twenty years, the girl who invited tan and freckles, wielded the tennis bat in the morning and lay basking in a bathing suit on the sand at noon, is gradually giving way to an entirely different type ­a type modeled, it would seem, at least so far as dress and outward characteristics are concerned, on the French demimondaine.  There are plenty of athletic girls to be found on the golf links and tennis courts; but a growing and large minority of maidens at the present time are too chary of their complexions to brave the sun.  Big hats, cloudlike veils, high heels, paint and powder mark the passing of the vain hope that woman can attract the male sex by virtue of her eugenic possibilities alone.

It is but another and unpleasantly suggestive indication that the simplicity of an older generation ­the rugged virtue of a more frugal time ­has given place to the sophistication of the Continent.  When I was a lad, going abroad was a rare and costly privilege.  A youth who had been to Rome, London and Paris, and had the unusual opportunity of studying the treasures of the Vatican, the Louvre and the National Gallery, was regarded with envy.  Americans went abroad for culture; to study the glories of the past.

Now the family that does not invade Europe at least every other summer is looked on as hopelessly old-fashioned.  No clerk can find a job on the Rue de Rivoli or the Rue de la Paix unless he speaks fluently the dialect of the customers on whose trade his employer chiefly relies ­those from Pennsylvania, New York and Illinois.  The American no longer goes abroad for improvement, but to amuse himself.  The college Freshman knows, at least by name, the latest beauty who haunts the Folies Bergeres, and his father probably has a refined and intimate familiarity with the special attractions of Ciro’s and the Trocadero.

I do not deny that we have learned valuable lessons from the Parisians.  At any rate our cooking has vastly improved.  Epicurus would have difficulty in choosing between the delights of New York and Paris ­for, after all, New York is Paris and Paris is New York.  The chef of yesterday at Voisin’s rules the kitchen of the Ritz-Carlton or the Plaza to-day; and he cannot have traveled much who does not find a dozen European acquaintances among the head waiters of Broadway.  Not to know Paris nowadays is felt to be as great a humiliation as it was fifty years ago not to know one’s Bible.

Beyond the larger number of Americans who visit Paris for legitimate or semilegitimate purposes, there is a substantial fraction who go to do things they either cannot or dare not do at home.  And as those who have not the time or the money to cross the Atlantic and who still itch for the boulevards must be kept contented, Broadway is turned into Montmartre.  The result is that we cannot take our daughters to the theater without risking familiarizing them with vice in one form or another.  I do not think I am overstating the situation when I say that it would be reasonably inferred from most of our so-called musical shows and farces that the natural, customary and excusable amusement of the modern man after working hours ­whether the father of a family or a youth of twenty ­is a promiscuous adventuring into sexual immorality.

I do not regard as particularly dangerous the vulgar French farce where papa is caught in some extraordinary and buffoonlike situation with the washerwoman.  Safety lies in exaggeration.  But it is a different matter with the ordinary Broadway show, where virtue is made ­at least inferentially ­the object of ridicule, and sexuality is the underlying purpose of the production.  During the present New York theatrical season several plays have been already censored by the authorities, and either been taken off entirely or so altered as to be still within the bounds of legal pruriency.

Whether I am right in attributing it to the influence of the French music halls or not, it is the fact that the tone of our theatergoing public is essentially low.  Boys and girls who are taken in their Christmas holidays to see plays at which their parents applaud questionable songs and suggestive dances, cannot be blamed for assuming that there is not one set of morals for the stage and another for ordinary social intercourse.

Hence the college boy who has kept straight for eight months in the year is apt to wonder:  What is the use?  And the debutante who is curious for all the experiences her new liberty makes possible takes it for granted that an amorous trifling is the ordinary incident to masculine attention.

This is far from being mere theory.  It is a matter of common knowledge that recently the most prominent restaurateur in New York found it necessary to lock up, or place a couple of uniformed maids in, every unoccupied room in his establishment whenever a private dance was given there for young people.  Boys and girls of eighteen would leave these dances by dozens and, hiring taxicabs, go on slumming expeditions and excursions to the remoter corners of Central Park.  In several instances parties of two or four went to the Tenderloin and had supper served in private rooms.

This is the childish expression of a demoralization that is not confined simply to smart society, but is gradually permeating the community in general.  From the ordinary dinner-table conversation one hears at many of the country houses on Long Island it would be inferred that marriage was an institution of value only for legitimatizing concubinage; that an old-fashioned love affair was something to be rather ashamed of; and that morality in the young was hardly to be expected.  Of course a great deal of this is mere talk and bombast, but the maid-servants hear it.

I believe, fortunately ­and my belief is based on a fairly wide range of observation ­that the Continental influence I have described has produced its ultimate effect chiefly among the rich; yet its operation is distinctly observable throughout American life.  Nowhere is this more patent than in much of our current magazine literature and light fiction.  These stories, under the guise of teaching some moral lesson, are frequently designed to stimulate all the emotions that could be excited by the most vicious French novel.  Some of them, of course, throw off all pretense and openly ape the petit histoire d’un amour; but essentially all are alike.  The heroine is a demimondaine in everything but her alleged virtue ­the hero a young bounder whose better self restrains him just in time.  A conventional marriage on the last page legalizes what would otherwise have been a liaison or a degenerate flirtation.

The astonishingly unsophisticated and impossibly innocent shopgirl who ­in the story ­just escapes the loss of her honor; the noble young man who heroically “marries the girl”; the adventures of the debonaire actress, who turns out most surprisingly to be an angel of sweetness and light; and the Johnny whose heart is really pure gold, and who, to the reader’s utter bewilderment, proves himself to be a Saint George ­these are the leading characters in a great deal of our periodical literature.

A friend of mine who edits one of the more successful magazines tells me there are at least half a dozen writers who are paid guaranteed salaries of from twelve thousand dollars to eighteen thousand dollars a year for turning out each month from five thousand to ten thousand words of what is euphemistically termed “hot stuff.”  An erotic writer can earn yearly at the present time more than the salary of the president of the United States.  What the physical result of all this is going to be does not seem to me to matter much.  If the words of Jesus Christ have any significance we are already debased by our imaginations.

We are dangerously near an epoch of intellectual if not carnal debauchery.  The prevailing tendency on the part of the young girls of to-day to imitate the dress and makeup of the Parisian cocotte is unconsciously due to this general lowering of the social moral tone.  Young women in good society seem to feel that they must enter into open competition with their less fortunate sisters.  And in this struggle for survival they are apparently determined to yield no advantage.  Herein lies the popularity of the hobble skirt, the transparent fabric that hides nothing and follows the move of every muscle, and the otherwise senseless peculiarities and indecencies of the more extreme of the present fashions.

And here, too, is to be found the reason for the popularity of the current style of dancing, which offers no real attraction except the opportunity for a closeness of contact otherwise not permissible.

“It’s all in the way it is done,” says Mrs. Jones, making the customary defense.  “The tango and the turkey trot can be danced as unobjectionably as the waltz.”

Exactly!  Only the waltz is not danced that way; and if it were the offending couple would probably be put off the floor.  Moreover, their origin and history demonstrates their essentially vicious character.  Is there any sensible reason why one’s daughter should be encouraged to imitate the dances of the Apache and the negro debauchee?  Perhaps, after all, the pendulum has merely swung just a little too far and is knocking against the case.  The feet of modern progress cannot be hampered by too much of the dead underbrush of convention.

The old-fashioned prudery that in former days practically prevented rational conversation between men and women is fortunately a thing of the past, and the fact that it is no longer regarded as unbecoming for women to take an interest in all the vital problems of the day ­municipal, political and hygienic ­provided they can assist in their solution, marks several milestones on the highroad of advance.

On the other hand the widespread familiarity with these problems, which has been engendered simply for pecuniary profit by magazine literature in the form of essays, fiction and even verse, is by no means an undiluted blessing ­particularly if the accentuation of the author is on the roses lining the path of dalliance quite as much as on the destruction to which it leads.  The very warning against evil may turn out to be in effect only a hint that it is readily accessible.  One does not leave the candy box open beside the baby even if the infant has received the most explicit instructions as to the probable effect of too much sugar upon its tiny kidneys.  Moreover, the knowledge of the prevalence of certain vices suggests to the youthful mind that what is so universal must also be rather excusable, or at least natural.

It seems to me that, while there is at present a greater popular knowledge of the high cost of sinning, there is at the same time a greater tolerance for sin itself.  Certainly this is true among the people who make up the circle of my friends.  “Wild oats” are regarded as entirely a matter of course.  No anecdote is too broad to be told openly at the dinner table; in point of fact the stories that used to be whispered only very discreetly in the smoking room are now told freely as the natural relishes to polite conversation.  In that respect things are pretty bad.

One cannot help wondering what goes on inside the villa on Rhode Island Avenue when the eighteen-year-old daughter of the house remarks to the circle of young men and women about her at a dance:  “Well, I’m going to bed ­seule!” The listener furtively speculates about mama.  He feels quite sure about papa.  Anyhow this particular mot attracted no comment.  Doubtless the young lady was as far above suspicion as the wife of Cæsar; but she and her companions in this particular set have an appalling frankness of speech and a callousness in regard to discussing the more personal facts of human existence that is startling to a middle-aged man like myself.

I happened recently to overhear a bit of casual dinner-table conversation between two of the gilded ornaments of the junior set.  He was a boy of twenty-five, well known for his dissipations, but, nevertheless, regarded by most mothers as a highly desirable parti.

“Oh, yes!” he remarked easily.  “They asked me if I wanted to go into a bughouse, and I said I hadn’t any particular objection.  I was there a month.  Rum place!  I should worry!”

“What ward?” she inquired with polite interest.

“Inebriates’, of course,” said he.

I am inclined to attribute much of the questionable taste and conduct of the younger members of the fast set to neglect on the part of their mothers.  Women who are busy all day and every evening with social engagements have little time to cultivate the friendship of their daughters.  Hence the girl just coming out is left to shift for herself, and she soon discovers that a certain risque freedom in manner and conversation, and a disregard of convention, will win her a superficial popularity which she is apt to mistake for success.

Totally ignorant of what she is doing or the essential character of the means she is employing, she runs wild and soon earns an unenviable reputation, which she either cannot live down or which she feels obliged to live up to in order to satisfy her craving for attention.  Many a girl has gone wrong simply because she felt that it was up to her to make good her reputation for caring nothing for the proprieties.

As against an increasing looseness in talk and conduct, it is interesting to note that heavy drinking is clearly going out of fashion in smart society.  There can be no question as to that.  My champagne bills are not more than a third of what they were ten years ago.  I do not attribute this particularly to the temperance movement.  But, as against eight quarts of champagne for a dinner of twenty ­which used to be about my average when we first began entertaining in New York ­three are now frequently enough.  I have watched the butler repeatedly at large dinner parties as he passed the wine and seen him fill only four or five glasses.

Women rarely drink at all.  About one man in three takes champagne.  Of course he is apt to drink whisky instead, but by no means the same amount as formerly.  If it were not for the convention requiring sherry, hock, champagne and liquors to be served the modern host could satisfy practically all the serious liquid requirements of his guests with a quart bottle of Scotch and a siphon of soda.  Claret, Madeira, sparkling Moselles and Burgundies went out long ago.  The fashion that has taught women self-control in eating has shown their husbands the value of abstinence.  Unfortunately I do not see in this a betterment in morals, but mere self-interest ­which may or may not be the same thing, according to one’s philosophy.  If a man drinks nowadays he drinks because he wants to and not to be a good fellow.  A total abstainer finds himself perfectly at home anywhere.

Of course the fashionables, if they are going to set the pace, have to hit it up in order to head the procession.  The fastness of the smart set in England is notorious, and it is the same way in France, Russia, Italy, Germany, Scandinavia ­the world over; and as society tends to become unified mere national boundaries have less significance.  The number of Americans who rent houses in London and Paris, and shooting boxes in Scotland, is large.

Hence the moral tone of Continental society and of the English aristocracy is gradually becoming more and more our own.  But with this difference ­that, as the aristocracy in England and Continental Europe is a separate caste, a well-defined order, having set metes and bounds, which considers itself superior to the rest of the population and views it with indifference, so its morals are regarded as more or less its own affair, and they do not have a wide influence on the community at large.

Even if he drinks champagne every night at dinner the Liverpool pickle merchant knows he cannot get into the king’s set; but here the pickle man can not only break into the sacred circle, but he and his fat wife may themselves become the king and queen.  So that a knowledge of how smart society conducts itself is an important matter to every man and woman living in the United States, since each hopes eventually to make a million dollars and move to New York.  With us the fast crowd sets the example for society at large; whereas in England looseness in morals is a recognized privilege of the aristocracy to which the commoner may not aspire.

The worst feature of our situation is that the quasi-genteel working class, of whom our modern complex life supports hundreds of thousands ­telephone operators, stenographers, and the like ­greedily devour the newspaper accounts of the American aristocracy and model themselves, so far as possible, after it.  It is almost unbelievable how intimate a knowledge these young women possess of the domestic life, manner of speech and dress of the conspicuous people in New York society.

I once stepped into the Waldorf with a friend of mine who wished to send a telephone message.  He is a quiet, unassuming man of fifty, who inherited a large fortune and who is compelled, rather against his will, to do a large amount of entertaining by virtue of the position in society which Fate has thrust on him.  It was a long-distance call.

“Who shall I say wants to talk?” asked the goddess with fillet-bound yellow hair in a patronizingly indifferent tone.

“Mr. ­,” answered my companion.

Instantly the girl’s face was suffused with a smile of excited wonder.

“Are you Mr. ­, the big swell who gives all the dinners and dances?” she inquired.

“I suppose I’m the man,” he answered, rather amused than otherwise.

“Gee!” she cried, “ain’t this luck!  Look here, Mame!” she whispered hoarsely.  “I’ve got Mr. ­ here on a long distance.  What do you think of that!”

One cannot doubt that this telephone girl would unhesitatingly regard as above criticism anything said or done by a woman who moved in Mr. ­ ’s circle.  Unfortunately what this circle does is heralded in exaggerated terms.  The influence of these partially true and often totally false reports is far-reaching and demoralizing.

The other day the young governess of a friend of my wife gave up her position, saying she was to be married.  Her employer expressed an interest in the matter and asked who was going to perform the ceremony.  She was surprised to learn that the functionary was to be the local country justice of the peace.

“But why aren’t you going to have a clergyman marry you?” asked our friend.

“Because I don’t want it too binding!” answered the girl calmly.

So far has the prevalence of divorce cast its enlightening beams.

I have had a shooting box in Scotland on several different occasions; and my wife has conducted successful social campaigns, as I have said before, in London, Paris, Rome and Berlin.  I did not go along, but I read about it all in the papers and received weekly from the scene of conflict a pound or so of mail matter, consisting of hundreds of diaphanous sheets of paper, each covered with my daughters’ fashionable humpbacked handwriting.  Hastings, my stenographer, became very expert at deciphering and transcribing it on the machine for my delectation.

I was quite confused at the number and variety of the titles of nobility with which my family seemed constantly to be surrounded.  They had a wonderful time, met everybody, and returned home perfected cosmopolitans.  What their ethical standards are I confess I do not know exactly, for the reason that I see so little of them.  They lead totally independent lives.

On rare occasions we are invited to the same houses at the same time, and on Christmas Eve we still make it a point always to stay at home together.  Really I have no idea how they dispose of their time.  They are always away, making visits in other cities or taking trips.  They chatter fluently about literature, the theater, music, art, and know a surprising number of celebrities in this and other countries ­particularly in London.  They are good linguists and marvelous dancers.  They are respectful, well mannered, modest, and mildly affectionate; but somehow they do not seem to belong to me.  They have no troubles of which I am the confidant.

If they have any definite opinions or principles I am unaware of them; but they have the most exquisite taste.  Perhaps with them this takes the place of morals.  I cannot imagine my girls doing or saying anything vulgar, yet what they are like when away from home I have no means of finding out.  I am quite sure that when they eventually select their husbands I shall not be consulted in the matter.  My formal blessing will be all that is asked, and if that blessing is not forthcoming no doubt they will get along well enough without it.

However, I am the constant recipient of congratulations on being the parent of such charming creatures.  I have succeeded ­apparently ­in this direction as in others.  Succeeded in what?  I cannot imagine these girls of mine being any particular solace to my old age.

Recently, since writing these confessions of mine, I have often wondered why my children were not more to me.  I do not think they are much more to my wife.  I suppose it could just as well be put the other way.  Why are we not more to them?  It is because, I fancy, this modern existence of ours, where every function and duty of maternity ­except the actual giving of birth ­is performed vicariously for us, destroys any interdependence between parents and their offspring.  “Smart” American mothers no longer, I am informed, nurse their babies.  I know that my wife did not nurse hers.  And thereafter each child had its own particular French bonne and governess besides.

Our nursery was a model of dainty comfort.  All the superficial elegancies were provided for.  It was a sunny, dustless apartment, with snow-white muslins, white enamel, and a frieze of grotesque Noah’s Ark animals perambulating round the wall.  There were huge dolls’ houses, with electric lights; big closets of toys.  From the earliest moment possible these three infants began to have private lessons in everything, including drawing, music and German.  Their little days were as crowded with engagements then as now.  Every hour was provided for; but among these multifarious occupations there was no engagement with their parents.

Even if their mother had not been overwhelmed with social duties herself my babies would, I am confident, have had no time for their parent except at serious inconvenience and a tremendous sacrifice of time.  To be sure, I used occasionally to watch them decorously eating their strictly supervised suppers in the presence of the governess; but the perfect arrangements made possible by my financial success rendered parents a superfluity.  They never bumped their heads, or soiled their clothes, or dirtied their little faces ­so far as I knew.  They never cried ­at least I was never permitted to hear them.

When the time came for them to go to bed each raised a rosy little cheek and said sweetly:  “Good night, papa.”  They had, I think, the usual children’s diseases ­exactly which ones I am not sure of; but they had them in the hospital room at the top of the house, from which I was excluded, and the diseases progressed with medical propriety in due course and under the efficient management of starchy trained nurses.

Their outdoor life consisted in walking the asphalt pavements of Central Park, varied with occasional visits to the roller-skating rink; but their social life began at the age of four or five.  I remember these functions vividly, because they were so different from those of my own childhood.  The first of these was when my eldest daughter attained the age of six years.  Similar events in my private history had been characterized by violent games of blind man’s buff, hide and seek, hunt the slipper, going to Jerusalem, ring-round-a-rosy, and so on, followed by a dish of ice-cream and hairpulling.

Not so with my offspring.  Ten little ladies and gentlemen, accompanied by their maids, having been rearranged in the dressing room downstairs, were received by my daughter with due form in the drawing room.  They were all flounced, ruffled and beribboned.  Two little boys of seven had on Eton suits.  Their behavior was impeccable.

Almost immediately a professor of legerdemain made his appearance and, with the customary facility of his brotherhood, proceeded to remove tons of debris from presumably empty hats, rabbits from handkerchiefs, and hard-boiled eggs from childish noses and ears.  The assembled group watched him with polite tolerance.  At intervals there was a squeal of surprise, but it soon developed that most of them had already seen the same trickman half a dozen times.  However, they kindly consented to be amused, and the professor gave way to a Punch and Judy show of a sublimated variety, which the youthful audience viewed with mild approval.

The entertainment concluded with a stereopticon exhibition of supposedly humorous events, which obviously did not strike the children as funny at all.  Supper was laid in the dining room, where the table had been arranged as if for a banquet of diplomats.  There were flowers in abundance and a life-size swan of icing at each end.  Each child was assisted by its own nurse, and our butler and a footman served, in stolid dignity, a meal consisting of rice pudding, cereals, cocoa, bread and butter, and ice-cream.

It was by all odds the most decorous affair ever held in our house.  At the end the gifts were distributed ­Parisian dolls, toy baby-carriages and paint boxes for the girls; steam engines, magic lanterns and miniature circuses for the boys.  My bill for these trifles came to one hundred and twelve dollars.  At half-past six the carriages arrived and our guests were hurried away.

I instance this affair because it struck the note of elegant propriety that has always been the tone of our family and social life.  The children invited to the party were the little boys and girls whose fathers and mothers we thought most likely to advance their social interests later on.

Of these children two of the girls have married members of the foreign nobility ­one a jaded English lord, the other a worthless and dissipated French count; another married ­fifteen years later ­one of these same little boys and divorced him within eighteen months; while two of the girls ­our own ­have not married.

Of the boys one wedded an actress; another lives in Paris and studies “art”; one has been already accounted for; and two have given their lives to playing polo, the stock market, and elevating the chorus.

Beginning at this early period, my two daughters, and later on my son, met only the most select young people of their own age in New York and on Long Island.  I remember being surprised at the amount of theatergoing they did by the time the eldest was nine years old.  My wife made a practice of giving a children’s theater party every Saturday and taking her small guests to the matinee.  As the theaters were more limited in number then than now these comparative infants sooner or later saw practically everything that was on the boards ­good, bad and indifferent; and they displayed a precocity of criticism that quite astounded me.

Their real social career began with children’s dinners and dancing parties by the time they were twelve, and their later coming out changed little the mode of life to which they had been accustomed for several years before it.  The result of their mother’s watchful care and self-sacrifice is that these two young ladies could not possibly be happy, or even comfortable, if they married men unable to furnish them with French maids, motors, constant amusement, gay society, travel and Paris clothes.

Without these things they would wither away and die like flowers deprived of the sun.  They are physically unfit to be anything but the wives of millionaires ­and they will be the wives of millionaires or assuredly die unmarried.  But, as the circle of rich young men of their acquaintance is more or less limited their chances of matrimony are by no means bright, albeit that they are the pivots of a furious whirl of gaiety which never stops.

No young man with an income of less than twenty thousand a year would have the temerity to propose to either of them.  Even on twenty thousand they would have a hard struggle to get along; it would mean the most rigid economy ­and, if there were babies, almost poverty.

Besides, when girls are living in the luxury to which mine are accustomed they think twice before essaying matrimony at all.  The prospects of changing Newport, Palm Beach, Paris, Rome, Nice and Biarritz for the privilege of bearing children in a New York apartment house does not allure, as in the case of less cosmopolitan young ladies.  There must be love ­plus all present advantages!  Present advantages withdrawn, love becomes cautious.

Even though the rich girl herself is of finer clay than her parents and, in spite of her artificial environment and the false standards by which she is surrounded, would like to meet and perhaps eventually marry some young man who is more worth while than the “pet cats” of her acquaintance, she is practically powerless to do so.  She is cut off by the impenetrable artificial barrier of her own exclusiveness.  She may hear of such young men ­young fellows of ambition, of adventurous spirit, of genius, who have already achieved something in the world, but they are outside the wall of money and she is inside it, and there is no way for them to get in or for her to get out.  She is permitted to know only the jeunesse doree ­the fops, the sports, the club-window men, whose antecedents are vouched for by the Social Register.

She has no way of meeting others.  She does not know what the others are like.  She is only aware of an instinctive distaste for most of the young fellows among whom she is thrown.  At best they are merely innocuous when they are not offensive.  They do nothing; they intend never to do anything.  If she is the American girl of our plays and novels she wants something better; and in the plays and novels she always gets him ­the dashing young ranchman, the heroic naval lieutenant, the fearless Alaskan explorer, the tireless prospector or daring civil engineer.  But in real life she does not get him ­except by the merest fluke of fortune.  She does not know the real thing when she meets it, and she is just as likely to marry a dissipated groom or chauffeur as the young Stanley of her dreams.

The saddest class in our social life is that of the thoroughbred American girl who is a thousand times too good for her de-luxe surroundings and the crew of vacuous la-de-da Willies hanging about her, yet who, absolutely cut off from contact with any others, either gradually fades into a peripatetic old maid, wandering over Europe, or marries an eligible, turkey-trotting nondescript ­“a mimmini-pimmini, Francesca da Rimini, je-ne-saïs-quoi young man.”

The Atlantic seaboard swarms in summertime with broad-shouldered, well-bred, highly educated and charming boys, who have had every advantage except that of being waited on by liveried footmen.  They camp in the woods; tutor the feeble-minded sons of the rich; tramp and bicycle over Swiss mountain passes; sail their catboats through the island-studded reaches and thoroughfares of the Maine coast, and grow brown and hard under the burning sun.  They are the hope of America.  They can carry a canoe or a hundred-pound pack over a forest trail; and in the winter they set the pace in the scientific, law and medical schools.  Their heads are clear, their eyes are bright, and there is a hollow instead of a bow window beneath the buttons of their waistcoats.

The feet of these young men carry them to strange places; they cope with many and strange monsters.  They are our Knights of the Round Table.  They find the Grail of Achievement in lives of hard work, simple pleasures and high ideals ­in college and factory towns; in law courts and hospitals; in the mountains of Colorado and the plains of the Dakotas.  They are the best we have; but the poor rich girl rarely, if ever, meets them.  The barrier of wealth completely hems her in.  She must take one of those inside or nothing.

When, in a desperate revolt against the artificiality of her existence, she breaks through the wall she is easy game for anybody ­as likely to marry a jockey or a professional forger as one of the young men of her desire.  One should not blame a rich girl too much for marrying a titled and perhaps attractive foreigner.  The would-be critic has only to step into a Fifth Avenue ballroom and see what she is offered in his place to sympathize with and perhaps applaud her selection.  Better a year of Europe than a cycle of ­shall we say, Narragansett?  After all, why not take the real thing, such as it is, instead of an imitation?

I believe that one of the most cruel results of modern social life is the cutting off of young girls from acquaintanceship with youths of the sturdy, intelligent and hardworking type ­and the unfitting of such girls for anything except the marriage mart of the millionaire.

I would give half of all I possess to see my daughters happily married; but I now realize that their education renders such a marriage highly difficult of satisfactory achievement.  Their mother and I have honestly tried to bring them up in such a way that they can do their duty in that state of life to which it hath pleased God to call them.  But unfortunately, unless some man happens to call them also, they will have to keep on going round and round as they are going now.

We did not anticipate the possibility of their becoming old maids, and they cannot become brides of the church.  I should honestly be glad to have either of them marry almost anybody, provided he is a decent fellow.  I should not even object to their marrying foreigners, but the difficulty is that it is almost impossible to find out whether a foreigner is really decent or not.  It is true that the number of foreign noblemen who marry American girls for love is negligible.  There is undoubtedly a small and distinguished minority who do so; but the transaction is usually a matter of bargain and sale, and the man regards himself as having lived up to his contract by merely conferring his title on the woman he thus deigns to honor.

I should prefer to have them marry Americans, of course; but I no longer wish them to marry Americans of their own class.  Yet, unfortunately, they would be unwilling to marry out of it.  A curious situation!  I have given up my life to buying a place for my children that is supposed to give them certain privileges, and I now am loath to have them take advantage of those privileges.

The situation has its amusing as well as its pathetic side ­for my son, now that I come to think of it, is one of the eligibles.  He knows everybody and is on the road to money.  He is one of the opportunities that society is offering to the daughters of other successful men.  Should I wish my own girls to marry a youth like him?  Far from it!  Yet he is exactly the kind of fellow that my success has enabled them to meet and know, and whom Fate decrees that they shall eventually marry if they marry at all.

When I frankly face the question of how much happiness I get out of my children I am constrained to admit that it is very little.  The sense of proprietorship in three such finished products is something, to be sure; and, after all, I suppose they have ­concealed somewhere ­a real affection for their old dad.  At times they are facetious ­almost playful ­as on my birthday; but I fancy that arises from a feeling of embarrassment at not knowing how to be intimate with a parent who crosses their path only twice a week, and then on the stairs.

My son has attended to his own career now for some fourteen years; in fact I lost him completely before he was out of knickerbockers.  Up to the time when he was sent away to boarding school he spent a rather disconsolate childhood, playing with mechanical toys, roller skating in the Mall, going occasionally to the theater, and taking music lessons; but he showed so plainly the debilitating effect of life in the city for eight months in the year that at twelve he was bundled off to a country school.  Since then he has grown to manhood without our assistance.  He went away undersized, pale, with a meager little neck and a sort of wistful Nicholas Nickelby expression.  When he returned at the Christmas vacation he had gained ten pounds, was brown and freckled, and looked like a small giraffe in pantalets.

Moreover, he had entirely lost the power of speech, owing to a fear of making a fool of himself.  During the vacation in question he was reoutfitted and sent three times a week to the theater.  On one or two occasions I endeavored to ascertain how he liked school, but all I could get out of him was the vague admission that it was “all right” and that he liked it “well enough.”  This process of outgrowing his clothes and being put through a course of theaters at each vacation ­there was nothing else to do with him ­continued for seven years, during which time he grew to be six feet two inches in height and gradually filled out to man’s size.  He managed to hold a place in the lower third of his class, with the aid of constant and expensive tutoring in the summer vacations, and he finally was graduated with the rest and went to Harvard.

By this time he preferred to enjoy himself in his own way during his leisure and we saw less of him than ever.  But, whatever his intellectual achievements may be, there is no doubt as to his being a man of the world, entirely at ease anywhere, with perfect manners and all the social graces.  I do not think he was particularly dissipated at Harvard; on the other hand, I am assured by the dean that he was no student.  He “made” a select club early in his course and from that time was occupied, I suspect, in playing poker and bridge, discussing deep philosophical questions and acquiring the art of living.  He never went in for athletics; but by doing nothing in a highly artistic manner, and by dancing with the most startling agility, he became a prominent social figure and a headliner in college theatricals.

From his sophomore year he has been in constant demand for cotillions, house parties and yachting trips.  His intimate pals seem to be middle-aged millionaires who are known to me in only the most casual way; and he is a sort of gentleman-in-waiting ­I believe the accepted term is “pet cat” ­to several society women, for whom he devises new cotillion figures, arranges original after-dinner entertainments and makes himself generally useful.

Like my two daughters he has arrived ­absolutely; but, though we are members of the same learned profession, he is almost a stranger to me.  I had no difficulty in getting him a clerkship in a gilt-edged law firm immediately after he was admitted to the bar and he is apparently doing marvelously well, though what he can possibly know of law will always remain a mystery to me.  Yet he is already, at the age of twenty-eight, a director in three important concerns whose securities are listed on the stock exchange, and he spends a great deal of money, which he must gather somehow.  I know that his allowance cannot do much more than meet his accounts at the smart clubs to which he belongs.

He is a pleasant fellow and I enjoy the rare occasions when I catch a glimpse of him.  I do not think he has any conspicuous vices ­or virtues.  He has simply had sense enough to take advantage of his social opportunities and bids fair to be equally successful with myself.  He has really never done a stroke of work in his life, but has managed to make himself agreeable to those who could help him along.  I have no doubt those rich friends of his throw enough business in his way to net him ten or fifteen thousand dollars a year, but I should hesitate to retain him to defend me if I were arrested for speeding.

Nevertheless at dinner I have seen him bullyrag and browbeat a judge of our Supreme Court in a way that made me shudder, though I admit that the judge in question owed his appointment entirely to the friend of my son who happened to be giving the dinner; and he will contradict in a loud tone men and women older than myself, no matter what happens to be the subject under discussion.  They seem to like it ­why, I do not pretend to understand.  They admire his assurance and good nature, and are rather afraid of him!

I cannot imagine what he would find to do in my own law office; he would doubtless regard it as a dull place and too narrow a sphere for his splendid capabilities.  He is a clever chap, this son of mine; and though neither he nor his sisters seem to have any particular fondness for one another, he is astute at playing into their hands and they into his.  He also keeps a watchful eye on our dinner invitations, so they will not fall below the properly exclusive standard.

“What are you asking old Washburn for?” he will ask.  “He’s been a dead one these five years!” Or:  “I’d cut out the Becketts ­at least if you’re asking the Thompsons.  They don’t go with the same crowd.”  Or:  “Why don’t you ask the Peyton-Smiths?  They’re nothing to be afraid of if they do cut a dash at Newport.  The old girl is rather a pal of mine.”

So we drop old Washburn, cut out the Becketts, and take courage and invite the hyphenated Smiths.  A hint from him pays handsome dividends! and he is distinctly proud of the family and anxious to push it along to still greater success.

However, he has never asked my help or assistance ­except in a financial way.  He has never come to me for advice; never confided any of his perplexities or troubles to me.  Perhaps he has none.  He seems quite sufficient unto himself.  And he certainly is not my friend.  It seems strange that these three children of mine, whose upbringing has been the source of so much thought and planning on the part of my wife and myself, and for whose ultimate benefit we have shaped our own lives, should be the merest, almost impersonal, acquaintances.

The Italian fruit-vender on the corner, whose dirty offspring crawl among the empty barrels behind the stand, knows far more of his children than do we of ours, will have far more influence on the shaping of their future lives.  They do not need us now and they never have needed us.  A trust company could have performed all the offices of parenthood with which we have been burdened.  We have paid others to be father and mother in our stead ­or rather, as I now see, have had hired servants to go through the motions for us; and they have done it well, so far as the mere physical side of the matter is concerned.  We have been almost entirely relieved of care.

We have never been annoyed by our children’s presence at any time.  We have never been bothered with them at meals.  We have never had to sit up with them when they could not go to sleep, or watch at their bedsides during the night when they were sick.  Competent nurses ­far more competent than we ­washed their little dirty hands, mended the torn dresses and kissed their wounds to make them well.  And when five o’clock came three dainty little Dresden figures in pink and blue ribbons were brought down to the drawing room to be admired by our guests.  Then, after being paraded, they were carried back to the nursery to resume the even tenor of their independent existences.

No one of us has ever needed the other members of the family.  My wife has never called on either of our daughters to perform any of those trifling intimate services that bring a mother and her children together.  There has always been a maid standing ready to hook up her dress, fetch her book or her hat, or a footman to spring upstairs after the forgotten gloves.  And the girls have never needed their mother ­the governess could read aloud ever so much better, and they always had their own maid to look after their clothes.  When they needed new gowns they simply went downtown and bought them ­and the bill was sent to my office.  Neither of them was ever forced to stay at home that her sister might have some pleasure instead.  No; our wealth has made it possible for each of my children to enjoy every luxury without any sacrifice on another’s part.  They owe nothing to each other, and they really owe nothing to their mother or myself ­except perhaps a monetary obligation.

But there is one person, technically not one of our family, for whom my girls have the deepest and most sincere affection ­that is old Jane, their Irish nurse, who came to them just after they were weaned and stayed with us until the period of maids and governesses arrived.  I paid her twenty-five dollars a month, and for nearly ten years she never let them out of her sight ­crooning over them at night; trudging after them during the daytime; mending their clothes; brushing their teeth; cutting their nails; and teaching them strange Irish legends of the banshee.  When I called her into the library and told her the children were now too old for her and that they must have a governess, the look that came into her face haunted me for days.

“Ye’ll be after taking my darlin’s away from me?” she muttered in a dead tone. “’T will be hard for me!” She stood as if the heart had died within her, and the hundred-dollar bill I shoved into her hand fell to the floor.  Then she turned quickly and hurried out of the room without a sob.  I heard afterward that she cried for a week.

Now I always know when one of their birthdays has arrived by the queer package, addressed in old Jane’s quaint half-printed writing, that always comes.  She has cared for many dozens of children since then, but loves none like my girls, for she came to them in her young womanhood and they were her first charges.

And they are just as fond of her.  Indeed it is their loyalty to this old Irish nurse that gives me faith that they are not the cold propositions they sometimes seem to be.  For once when, after much careless delay, a fragmentary message came to us that she was ill and in a hospital my two daughters, who were just starting for a ball, flew to her bedside, sat with her all through the night and never left her until she was out of danger.

“They brought me back ­my darlin’s!” she whispered to us when later we called to see how she was getting on; and my wife looked at me across the rumpled cot and her lips trembled.  I knew what was in her mind.  Would her daughters have rushed to her with the same forgetfulness of self as to this prematurely gray and wrinkled woman whose shrunken form lay between us?

Poor old Jane!  Alone in an alien land, giving your life and your love to the children of others, only to have them torn from your arms just as the tiny fingers have entwined themselves like tendrils round your heart!  We have tossed you the choicest blessings of our lives and shouldered you with the heavy responsibilities that should rightfully have been our load.  Your cup has run over with both joy and sorrow but you have drunk of the cup, while we are still thirsty!  Our hearts are dry, while yours is green ­nourished with the love that should belong to us.  Poor old Jane?  Lucky old Jane!  Anyhow God bless you!