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Show New York's Shoddy Aristocracy. THE Hon. Henry Watterson of Lou- isville, Ky., has been commenting in his own peculiar way upon that portion of American society that calls itself the Four Hundred. Dropping the rapier for the moment, Mr. Watterson Wat-terson takes up the bludgeon and swings it with a lustiness which makes us marvel that he thought it worth smashing so slight a bubble. As a literary effort it certainly has merit, if nothing else is disturbed by the Ken-tuckian's Ken-tuckian's presentation. It is published on our first page. Most newspapers speak in terms of praise of Mr. Watterson's lashing of New York's, shoddy aristocracy, while others are inclined to think that the Kentuckian is firing off a cannon to dislodge a swallow. Harper's Weekly says that the excoriation which he applies ap-plies to this innnitesimally small portion por-tion of the society of the United States suggests the employment of a regiment regi-ment of artillery to crush a mosquito; for, after all, the Four Hundred In the whole body of American life is of no more moment than this temporarily annoying insect. In running over the real factors of life as we live it in this land, we cannot find that the men and wome who constitute this Spartan band of pleasure seekers impede any more than they assist in the great movements move-ments 1 V h i r. Vi o at tVia V.ttnm C national growth. The man of action brushes them aside as he walks the difficult paths from obscurity to achievement, as if they were so many gnats, the only difference being that the gnat has a power to sting which the money spenders of Newport and New York are not invested with. In art they have done nothing; as patrons of music it is not they, but their money, that counts, for no one ever hears of an intelligent appreciation of the subtleties of the great composers among them;', their influence on the drama is nil, and where- they try to make it otherwise, experience has shown that the effort is futile, and little short of ludicrous; in university life they are. never even considered r and the interest that the public take in them is merely the same interest they would show in any- other collection collec-tion of strange things, and is based wholly upon a morbid quality of mind about as important as that which prompts . crowds, to . gather when a horse falls In the street. It; therefore, matters not at all who they are or what they do, where or how they do it; and since they . are not truly ' as vicious as they would like people to believe they are, there is no reason why they should attract the attention even of Henry WTatterson, who is old enough to have become a philosopher, and who should be astute enough, now that he has become a man, to put aside childish things. The man who talks about the Four Hundred when there are great social problems on every side of him to be solved is as wasteful of his time as a fiddling Nero at the burning burn-ing of a Rome. |