The herald., 1895-02-27
AMERICAN sNoBsERy

Now as matter OF sober truth it is no.
body's business who marries Miss Anna
Gould or if she marries at all. And yet the
American nation is compelled to know
all about it. We are surfeited with every
minute detail OF the preparations" we
are informed of every trivial detail; pres
emily the brides costume will be described
to us down to the color of every crumpled
rose leaf in her corsage bouquet; even
the gossip of the neighbors is being re-
tailed to us and two continents are agog,
open-mouthed gaping, eyes protruding,
tongues awag in admiring wondermcnt of
the most ordinary event in life.
Even the judicious are stirred-to mu-
tiny. Their gorge rises in contemplation
of the snobbery of it all. If they are
Americans they cry out against the
servihty, the lick-spttle, toad-eating at
titude OF their countrymen making obei-
sance at the feet of this Daughter of the
Dollar and this Ass of Arissocracy.
Lower the scale a few degrees-make
Anna Gould an honest, Woodworking SER
want in the kitchen of respectable
family; present us to this Count Castel
lane in the condition of many better
man driving horse car or serving the
hungry in popular restaurant. They
would be human beings in those spheres
as they are in the exalted position"
they actually occupy, but the marriage
of ordinary Miss Anna Gould and plain
Boniface Castellane would not produce
ripple on the surface of the social swim.
The difference does not lie in the humani-
ty of the people before whom we are
salaaming and posturing-bu in the act
that they are people of consequence"
and position. " The one is an heiress
''in her own right to millions robbed
from the people by a constituencies scoun-
drel whose inlamy lives in the history of
Black Friday; the other is descended"
from feudal banditti who enslaved the
peasantry of a nation and impoverished
them until grass was their food and re-
venge their religion.
They are parvenus both, and they are
well mated. Miss Gould is paying a
price for a title-and not much of title
after all. A profiigate prodigal has flung
the dice on the hazard of this matrimo-
nial venture and he finds that he has
thrown sixes-lucky dog.
And that is all it amounts to as far as
the high contracting parties" are con-
cerned. But this simple statement of the
condition does not absolve the American
people-or that portion of them, at
least, who are playing such fantastic
tricks before high heaven. Our "ferce
democracie" is the laughing stock of the
world and no welkln splitting guffaw is
louder than that which emanates from
the throats of the European nobility"
1t is laugh raucous as the grinding of
files and it is accentuated by a sneer
that rips the lips OF the "arstocracy"
from the Ganges to the Thames.
Oh, my countrymen, and my country
n-self-styled ''sovereigns" bear
ing aloft the egis of the grandest re-
public the world has ever seen--why are
ye so abashed in the presence of these false
gods? Why do ye grovel and crawl and
cringe in the presence of this gilded Nam
mon and this tinseled Lazarus of nobility?
Upon what meat have they fed that they
have grown SO great? Wherein are they
better than the honest beggar, on whom
the worms of the grave will feed with
keener appetite that no lying epitaph of
superior virtue or worth defaces marble
wrenched from the bosom Of the common
mother by the toll hardened hands of an
i'll paid labor?
As Americans we have the right to pro-
test against this insult to American man
hood and American womanhood; and as
Americans we set the seal of honest con
demnation and denial on the assertion of
Americanism by all who bow down and
worship at this shrine of testers, fools and
parasites.