The evening times., 1899-05-31
LUXURY IN AMERICA.
Some Comparative observations by
an English Writer.
From the London Spectator

an English Writer.
From the London Spectator.)
There must be some pleasure in pos
sessing a very costly article simply for the
costiliness of it, or the millionaires OF the
world would not for the last two thousand
years have accumulated such articles The
great Roman MOBILES. who sometimes pos
sessed millions. and who could invest their
wealth at 10 per cent, built themselves
magnificent urban mansions as well as pa
latial villas, and filled them with the cost
liest articles they could hear of-statues
from Greece, great pieces in gold ana
silver "murrhine vases'-possibly porce-
lain-mosaics of elaborate design ana
workmanship. rich furs, silks worth thelr
weight in gold. then far above its present
value. and curios in the way OF ornamental
furniture So did the barbarian CHIEFS VINO
AT last stole these things from the Roman
palaces, and SO did the mobiles of the Mid
die Ages who even carried their treas
ures about with them to war-wltness the
Burgundian plunder carried on by the SWISS
an ostentatious, and one would tnlnA
inconyenient, practice, in which, however,
they were initiated by the Turks orlehiai
mobiles heap together the costiiest goods
often in places where they never see tneM'
and there are other princes in Asa besides
the Shah who could. If they would, display
buckets of Jewels such as our minister
once saw in Teheran, and bedsteads and
tables OF solid gold or silver. The present
writer has himself seen emeralds as large
as pigeons eggs which were hung on the
horses of the last Emperor OF Deihl; tne
Nizam OF Hyderabad offered E35o,0oo ior
one diamond-the figures we're sworn 10 al
a trial-and it is believed on good evidence
that the plunjer of the Secluded Clty IN
Pekin would yield millions.
I'LL n fnd2v
same. They build unusually large houses
ornamented with the costliest marbles and
they fill them with treasures OF whlcn
some are artistic. but all are purchased at
great prices. The rich Americans, many
of whom are getting . per cent OF tnelr
money from undertakings whlch tney
themselves control, have actually altered
the market prices OF all the more valuable
Jewels, adorn their wives and daughters
with furs and silks almost as costly as
those of the Roman ladies-not quite. for
the expenses of transport from all places
beyond the Roman world must nave
been enormous-and appear to seek occas-
ions for sinking money in great pieces OF
gold and silver At the recent wedding OF
Miss Virginia Fair and Mr.. W. X. VAN
derbilt. jr, each Of them representing
millionaire family of the first class, their
relatives and friends appear to have We'd
with one another in gifts which Lucullus or
Seneca would have considered splendid.
Their total value is said to have exceed
ed 6 100000
1t is no use to moralize upon the evil ef-
fects of heavy luxury of the kind we have
been describing. 1t is probably less than
we are Just now all tempted to imagine.
The Socialist workman dislikes and envies
the bourgeois Just above him more than
he enyies or dislikes the millionaire, who.
at all events, breaks the gray monotony
of modern municipal life; and as for the
degradation Of the ideal, though that Oc-
ours. the George " kind Of man produces
| a recoil among thinkers, while his wealth
acts as fiery whip upon thousands who
| would else be clods. We dread the power
which the millionaires will one day pos
sess as the reverence for birth dies out and
| the thirst for physical enjoyment becomes
more Of a dominant passion, and. the
brain waking up under new cultivation,
| content with monotony becomes too diff
cult. much more than we dread the effect
| Of their example.
| The usual moralizing. too. though abso-
lutely true has lost its bite through over
much repetition, and We see abroad omi-
nous signs that men may sicken OF philan-
thropy, and say that it produces nothing
save new disposition to piunder in new
wavs. We prefer, therefore. today to
speculate on the ultimate destination of all
the fiuery Of which this week the bulletins
are full 1t will last long while, OF
course, for wealth is clothing itself in the
| magic armor of science, and, unhampered
nv slavery, which in the Roman period al
ways mined beneath it, will make stout
er fight than it did in the ancient world,
or in France at the time Of the Revolu-
tion: and the world has never yet been
ruled by its majority, but by the concen-
trated strength of limited castles bound to-
gether by a common interest, common
| conviction or a common fear; but if his
torv teaches anything it is that accumu-
lated wealth is at last transferred, and
disappears in the transfer. The treasures
of Rome have not merely passed into other
hands: they have passed away SO COM
pletely that 1t is doubtful il Jewel exists
| or a gold cup of which it is even probable
| that II belonged to a consular house, still
less to a prince whom the Romans plum
dered. Who will have 1t all, or destroy II
all. when the existing order, which has
rotten places in it. crumhles away? Will
the barbarians from below explode the
heap. as SO many believe? 1t is not i'm
nossible. though. as we have said. wealth
;s nutting on enchanted armor-insurrec-
tion against troops ia even now impossi-
hle-and though the superficial crust has
this protection, that all below who are ad-
mitted to share In it show disposition
To defend It. Or will Asia makes its last
rush, and, for moment. overwhelm civ
| ilization?
It is hardly conceivable. for locusts can
not cross the seas, numerous and frresisti-
BILE as they are, and the Americas cannot
practically be reached by land. Will the
Jews get it all, as some Of their dreamers
fancy, and. using it as weapon. build
| nm a nav and widely different civilization
intended to avenge the slavery Of nearly
.. 600 years? Or will the dream Of that
strange dreamer. David Urquhart, prove
true? He thought that there was cen
tripetal force in capital which would grad
uaily place the wealth Of the world In the
hands of one man, or one trust, and ulti-
mately provoke a savage civil war, n
| which all but the human race itself must
perish. 1t Is probable that We shall ad,