The age-herald., 1901-08-18
Newport Society Sossvp -.s~
nY nlEnERlck kNIckERRockER.

Newport. R. l.. August 17.-After forty years of association with people distin- guished in many of the great cities of this continent for their social position. and on the other side of the water, with titled personages in England, France and Germany. have come to the conclusion that should be in better health and know more of the actual life which has built up the nation. had I lived less in so- ciety. Like many others read the news papers and can talk of the things of tho day, but confess know little or noth- ing by actual observation of what Teddy Roosevelt calls the strenuous life. This remark is forced from me by noting how many people I am compelled to associate with who have come up from the seeth- ing masses within the last few years
 Last night I sat next to Mrs. Hermann Oelrichs, at dinner, and the conversation was happy and general. We were talk ing about the manliness of young En- ghshmen, who leave the tight little is- land to seek fortune in India and the colonies. Somebody spoke of the young Americans who went to the Klondike, and l ventured q remark about the plo- ncers in the gold fields of California. Scarce had I said 49 and California, when deep silence ensued. It was like speaking of the uso of a rope to g. family which had lost some of it's members at the end of it. Mrs. Oerichs said nothing, Mrs. Clarence Mackey smiled and Mrs Stuy said mischievously: Why don't you Mir. Knickerbocker, talk to Teenie Mills about the strenuous life in Cal1for- nia?'
 At once my mind was filled with phan- tom forms. There was young Mackey wedding the widow of the superintendent of the mine, she at that time keeping a miners boarding house: there was Mills with Lloyd Aspinwalrs pay for his ser vices as coachman in his pocket look ing for "a claim,' and Fair running a bar room where miners shot at the lamps. That was forty years ago. Today their children so exclusively fashionable, 50 enormously rich, so grandly magnificent that they don't see why those steel fac tory people bother dear MT. Morgan so."
 Just think of itl Think of the thou sands who went to California and did not strike fortune, either in gold, in whisky. in shares in lands or in any way. They too may have left children. Where are they? They may not be the friends of Pierpont; they may be found 
 How few succeeded. How few Mackeys, Floods, Fairs and others there were af- ter all. They drew the prizes, others drew blanks. What a lucky, narrow es- cape young Clarence Mackey has had from being "a hand in a mill? What a close shave Ogden Mills had from being a teamster or day laborer. Five min utes in the life of Fair might have made the career of Mrs. Hermann Oelrichs that of a maid servant in a San Francis co hotel.
 Why it is horrible to think of the fate these grand friends of mine have escaped. No wonder they don't think of 1t either! Some of their friends think of 1t for them. Friends do save us so much trouble, especially when they are dis agreeable memories.
 Dear me, dear me- I am overcome as I reflect upon the good fortune of those who escaped from poverty's clutches and now Mxuriate in the sunllt isle of wealth and fashion.
 Of course the same happy stroke that lifted Jim Fair from the mud and the mire fashioned the path over which Mrs. Willie K. Vanderbilt. Jr., sauntered up to the front seat In the congress of social celebrities. If her sister escaped being a chambermadd fn a hotel, she escaped, on the same logical reasons, a place as a maid in private family.
 There Is no doubt about it. our swell people this summer come very close to the people. realize 1t. It Is this reali- zation that makes me wish I had known more of the people. Their representa- tives in society are so creditable that I only wish had known more of them.
 When I come to think of it there are others who have come up since the war. It Is unnecessary to speak of the Van derbilts, everybody knows the old white whiskered "Commodore." He earned his way from the petty auger' to the Van- derbilt system, by hard knocks and years of pluck. Or Of the Wilson's. who kept a country store on the Kentucky and Tennessee line. I saw the old sign years and years ago when doing my duty at the front. Orme and Wilson. They ran cotton through. We helped them. We needed cotton In the North. We helped