The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1891-01-21
o1SUNDAY TH0UGHTSbo
AON%
MORALSGo MANNERS
by A CLERGYMAN.

In our larger cities there is class who
esteem themselves too good for contact
with common folks. They are the counter
part OF the flour hundred" OF Gotham, de-
scribed by Ward McAllister in his Society
as Have Found IT, This is the explana-
ton OF the wide sale OF that book, which
has no literary value, but gets its sole inn
portance from the fact that it photographs
the manner of life OF the elect select.
How do the upper ten" comport them
selves2
They reduce eating to a fine art. They
compete with one another in the number
and costlness OF their meals. A single
dinner often costs $4,000. The chef in
some kitchens commands $4,000 per an
mum. The salary OF a judge is hung up
in a chandelier. Lucian, the Roman
writer, tells OF an exhibition in
ancient Rome in which monkeys
had been trained to act. They played
their parts admirably before the wealth
and beauty of the city, until wag flung
handful of nuts on the stage, when
presto! the actors were monkeys again.
This is strikingy suggestive OF the Tour
hundred"
They give much time and attention to
dress The men initiate Beau Brummel,
who threw his whole soul into the tie of
his cravat. The women undress as far as
they dare, and them by strange abuse of
language, cali their nudity "full dress"
Decolete is only a foreign way of SPELL
indecency.
4 4 1 -
ceeds TO dance, That wakes the dudes and
dudines up. Miss Lydia Languish is gal
vanized into the semblance of life, and Au-
gustus Fitznoodleis a degree less blase.
They reckon time from ball to ball, and date
from german 10 german. "Society's" only
events are the learning a new waltz step
or the changing fashion. Such,
according to McAllister, who is a
high priest in the temple of fashion are
the serious employments of beings calling
themselves rational and Christian. Round
ana round they march in an endless pro-
cession OF folly, from dressing-room to
| dinner-table, from dinner-table to party,
going to bed late, rising tagged and heavy
eyed, only to begin each new day the
same rapid life. When winter ends and
| summer interrupts them, society whirls
off to seaside or mountains, but only to
| play. There is u strife among them Tor
precedence In ostentatious vulgarity.
| Chef vies with chef wine-cellar completes
with wine-cellar, and Worth and Redeem.
| the men-milliners, are the Achilles and
| Hector of the vulgar lliad. These are the
people who set the social pace, who give
or withhold the social entree, and who as
sumo to decide who shall be Sin the
SWIM" They are setting up in Amer
lea the standards OF living which
! brought ancient Rome to ruin, and which
precipitated the French revolution, when,
as Carlyle said, the eighteenth century
| blew its own brains out. The chief end
OF man, according TO McAllister, is to spend
fortune on dinner, pretend you know
who your grandfather was, cultivate a
complexion that will not wash and wear
a gown made by Worth. Pope wrote:
"Worth makes the man, but nowadays
| Worth makes the woman.
Thank God these noodles are only an
| excrescence in America. But they are
worth a moments study as examples of
what TO avoid-morbid social anatomy.
| Find out what the -four hundred" do, do
the exact opposite. and you will do about
| right. They are to be read, a. scholars
read the Hebrew, backward. There is
some dignity in, and some excuse for,
| European aristocracy, bad as it is. 1t
comes down from the past, was founded
in heroism, and is usually decorated with
culture, and often with gracious chart
ties. But this American counterpart,
| this fishy article of the McAllister brand
-phew! it smells rank to heaven OF de-
cayed cod. We are impelled to cry with
FdiStaf in the play: "No more OF that,
| Hal, an thou lowest me-" =
/
We need in this country a revival of
Notwithstanding in a political, but in a
moral sense. The lofty ideal of liberty,
equality and fraternity, which under-lie
our system, ought to be incuca ed. As
yet caste is only sporadic. 1t tends to be-
come epidemic. 1t should be the glory of
a man to be enrolled among the workers,
not the shirkers. We ought to feel, as
Emerson saws, that ''it is the privilege OF
honest work. whether it be making shoes
or making statutes, to invest the doer with
certain honorahleness Thus work
ingman has as much right to put "Hon."
before his name as has the congressman
who represents him. Abraham Lincoln
was once asked "What is your coat
of-arms?" Remembering his early occu-
patton of rail-splitting, he answered:
"My coat-of-arms? Why, pair of shir.
sleeves rolled up to the elbows, with
an Ak on the rampage!" In ancient and
imperial Rome, the congenial occupations
were loa6ng and fighting. In modern
and democratic America let the congenial
occupations be working and helping.
According to Philip Hamerton there are
only three callings in England that are
good form," viz, landowning, the church
and the army. The physician and the
lawyer are hardly tolerated. Commerce
is said to be social coventry; while the
mechanic world is as utterly beyond the
recognition of my lord and my lady as is
the east end of London. Let us not per-
init our anglo-maniacs to import this state
of things. Let the tariff on aristocracy re-
main so high as to be prohibitive,
while we cultivate the republican ideas
which inspired the song OF Burns ::
| For a. that and a. that.
| Our tails obscure, and a. that,
| The rank is but the guinea's stamp,
| The mans tho gowd for a. that.
The recent heresy trial in Cleveland.
| O., has attracted wide attention and
called forth many comments, some wise,
' I. Al.