accomplishments, and her golf is only so so. She isn't fast, nor loud, nor smart. She is just an average girl and," Maria cried in vexation, "there are such heaps of them. The luncheons and dinners and theatre parties I have given without result! It is so tiresome for her always to be bridesmaid. So we're going abroad. Father is willing to live at the Club. Our men are too comfortable to get married. It's simply wicked!"

"Maria," I said from my inmost conviction, "you have manœuvred, with the result that you have frightened off the eligibles—struggling eligibles, and those are sometimes the best. But what struggler would dare to ask a champagne-standard girl to keep his "flat"? It's flats these days. He wouldn't think of dragging a white-tulled angel from a palatial residence to a flat and a joint! You have frightened off the young men. Marriage is getting out of fashion, and so are the comforts of a home. It's all your fault, you champagne-standard mothers!"

Such was the coming-out of Nancy.

Now in my young days there was certainly no formal coming-out. All I remember is that one day I still wore my hair in two pigtails, and the next day old Mrs. Barnett Pendexter called. She was a fumbly old woman with her fingers, and by accident—my sisters always declared—she left two cards instead of one. The fatal result was that my pigtails were pinned up and I was dragged out by my mother when she made calls, for she declared, being socially learned, that now I was undoubtedly out. It was also a little surgical operation in a minor way, but compared to these days how simple and how inexpensive.

If one were asked which of the passions is the greatest force in modern Society, one could safely reply "jealousy." Jealousy makes the world go round. Don't we want what all our neighbours have, and don't we want it with all our might and main? If we want it badly enough crime will not stand in the way of getting it. Is it not at the bottom of most of our defalcations, embezzlements, and commercial dishonesty in general? The bank president who borrows the bank funds for his private use, the cashier who falsifies the books, the little clerk who embezzles as the result of expensive tastes,—are they not all the results of the falsity and extravagance of modern life? Compared to the judicious business man who keeps just within the border line that saves him from the criminal law, and who lays traps for his credulous fellow-creatures in the shape of alluring companies, the pickpocket, who runs some little risk, is a blameless and worthy character. The champagne standard is the whole world's measure, and even justice bows to it when it interprets its laws for the rich and the poor. A company promoter, who in the course of his career has wrecked thousands of lives, can, if he is only rich enough, consort with the noblest and most virtuous of the land; but of course he must be rich enough. Deny it who can? Be rich enough and you are forgiven all crimes. O Champagne Standard!

Last year a certain deceased millionaire was tried in London for gigantic frauds, and all the newspapers described how pleasantly he greeted his friends when he entered the court and took his seat behind his counsel. Positively not a bit proud. There was also a sympathetic description of his clothes! The moral is, be a scoundrel on a magnificent scale and you are still respected; indeed, you even become a hero in some people's eyes. Justice being blindfolded cannot see, which is a great convenience. Besides, are we not taught that God helps those who help themselves?

In America there is no aristocracy yet, but God help it when the time arrives, for it will be an aristocracy based on the most unworthy of foundations—money. As for romantic traditions, well, it will take several centuries to weave a halo of romance around a pork-packer, a petroleum magnate, a railroad wrecker, or the company promoters who flourish as the green bay tree. In centuries they may arrive at the dignity of being ancestors—at present they are just what they are, and are to be judged accordingly.

There is a growing mania in America these days for ancestors. It is a luxury which can be indulged in only after people have accumulated money. If you are grubbing for your daily bread it is a matter of profound indifference to you where you came from, seeing what you have reached is so unsatisfactory. But when your bank-book bursts with deposits and your greed for money is partly satisfied, it is natural that you should look out for new fields for your aspirations. So wealthy Americans are just now very busy unearthing ancestors, in spite of not becoming parents, and getting their genealogical tree planted, and rummaging in the dust of the past for possible forefathers, and buying family portraits. Yes, there is a great trade in family portraits—the dingier the better. At any rate it keeps the pot boiling for many a worthy painter, and that is something. Not that one has a rooted aversion to ancestors—they are not to be despised if they leave you an honourable name, a nice old estate, and cash and some brains, but there are ancestors of whom the less said the better, and whose only legacy would appear to be a slanting forehead, a weak chin, and a tendency to unlimited viciousness.

The Herald's College could tell many a queer story of our sturdy republicans in search of their forbears. An English woman told me that a New York family had annexed a crusading forefather of her own, as well as one who had had his head chopped off, and to whom they had no more right than the grocer round the corner. She acknowledged that they were a pretty bad lot (the ancestors), but she objected to have strangers meddle with them. "You are funny republicans," she added genially, "coming over here and grabbing our ancestors."

Now there is nothing so frank as a frank Englishwoman. "What is the use of celebrated ancestors," she added, "if your whole present family are as dull as ditch-water and bore you to distraction? I'd swap off my crusading ancestor and my chopped-off-head one any time for a cousin with brains. But mind you, I don't want your American millionaires grabbing 'em without leave."

There are the Bedfords of New York. Susan and I went to school together. Hitherto she has put on no airs with me, for I know the family traditions, and that her excellent father began life as a cobbler. Then he forsook cobbling and started a corset manufactory, which was a distinguished success because he had invented a bone so like the whale's that even that clever fish could not have proved it wasn't his; and the deception made the old man's fortune. Thereupon he rose superior and soared from corsets to real estate, and in real estate he made what was briefly described as "mints." It was in the corset period that Susan married Joe Bedford who was a drummer in the business, and though he retired from corsets and went into real estate along with his father-in-law, Susan was always conscious that he could never accommodate himself to the grandeur of his new life. She had to do all the aspiring, and it was she who passed a sponge over their previous existence, and every time I saw them in New York she had added a new lustre to their glory. The last time the door was opened to me by a footman, brooded over, as it were, by the very noblest kind of English butler. I saw at once that the whole family were afraid to death of him. But in spite of her grandeur, Susan herself saw me downstairs to the front door, in the American fashion, though conscious of the profound and stony disapproval of the English butler. As I came opposite the hat rack I caught sight of a satin banner covered with cabalistic characters floating gently over Joe's modest bowler that swung from a peg.

"Our coat of arms," Susan explained by way of introduction. "Just come home. It cost a great deal; everything costs so much. We have the same arms as the Duke of Bedford. It is pleasant to have a duke in the family."

"Since when?" I asked, and stared in astonishment.

"I found them in the