The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1833-1916, 1903-08-18
A Story From Saratoga.

ners in her efforts ito get into society,
calls attention to q sort Of social ambi-
ton which is not peculiar to that place
or to any special American social circle.
The complication Of the affair by a
divorce gives it, however an "up-to-
date social color. 1t is reasonable to
suppose and it would seem to us to be
inevitable, that when wives and hus-
bands, through the means of the divorce
court, are enabled to take to themselves
new matrimonial mates there must ensue
more or less awkward situations when
the old and the new married partners
affect the same social sphere or attempt
to break into it. The circumstance that
such situations must be frequent and
that they seem to be lightly borne, new
and old wives and husbands meeting
amicably enough at a common dinner
table, for example, may not be exhilarat-
ing to the social moralist, but, after all,
it demonstrates that the society of fash
ion is not so narrow in it's exclusiveness
as it has been represented to be, but
readily forgives and forgets, cannot be
surprised out of its self-control, and has
a mantle Of charity which is large and
broad.
Newspapers of the West find in our soci-
ETY. Of fashion more food for philosophio
discussion than it provokes here at home,
and we expect to see them interpreting
such an incident as that reported from
Saratoga as symptomatic Of an alarming
decadence in our mparatively fresh re-
publican society. Those papers, looking
on Newport as the authoritative seat Of
that society and its dictator think they
discover there germs of social decadence
and degeneration which are rapidly infect
ing Eastern society generally and which
will carry their ravages even to the as
piring fashion of the socially virgin West,
if the West is not allowed to extrpate
them in their Newport basking- ground.
But, according to those papers, that So
ciety looks askance at enterprising re-
cruits sent thither from the West, instead
of welcoming them as necessary agents
for its publication and salvation.
In no other part of the country, we will
say incidentally, do we find so much at
tention given by considerable news
papers to fashionable intelligence" as
at the West, though the South is close
second. Take the New Orleans Times
Democrat, for example. 1t fills page
after page with such information, drawn
from that town and from Louisiana and
all the neighboring States, and the vol
ume of the record is so great that it has
to be packed in small and close type. At
the same time, the papers West and South
pay close attention to the performances
of the particular society of fashion which
has its headquarters in New York and at
Newport. The people, men and women,
who are most conspicuous in it are
made into national characters. PARKWAY
papers, printed in the shadow of the
Rocky Mountains and by the tumbling
Pacific, seem to have in stock portraits
of these personages, to be reproduced,
periodically, when rumors of further di-
vorce or tales of especially piquant per-
formances at Newport make their print
ing excusable.
Mr.. HENRY WATTERsoN, in pretending
to treat all this as grave symptom Of
social decay seems to have set the moral
phiosophizing going, and now we find
it extensively in vogue at the West this
summer. The Western papers treat the
subject with the earnestness, even the
ferocity, which the discovery that cholera
germs were likely TO be transmitted from
Newport would provoke in them. Ac-
cording to their notions, that seat of
comparatively small part of the peo-
pie hereabouts who make business of
hunting for pleasure, is kept in continual
boil of social excitement. Actually, of
course, it is dull place, with society
usually commonplace, and of compass
so small that the members soon grow
tired Of the sight Of each other. When
the monotony of its life Is varied by tho
invention OF some new monkeyshines for
its amusement, the incident is not to be
regarded as symptom Of serious decay,
but rather as the expression. in the in
ventor and performer, Of a laudable
spirit Of social altruism.
The story from Saratoga to which we
have referred furnishes an illustration
of species of social mania produced by
the perversion of a laudable spirit. 1t is
the mania OF the social climber" as he
or she is described in the current termi-
nology. 1t consists in consuming pas
sion to "break into society" and is not a
new disease, for it's germs have always
been in every society,
The ambition to get up in the world
has given peculiar vitality to our Ameri-
can society. The older generation takes
pride in seeing the newer vault to
higher place than itself had attained,
and the prevalence of the feeling is very
far from symptom of decadence, forit
keeps American society from stagna-
ton.
OF course, the question of the standard
by which advancement is measured
comes in for consideration; but gener-