Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1905-12-03

idea of hospitality and the meanings of ac-
workmanship to be distorted into some-
thing grotesquely false by the contamina-
ton of the bounder tribe, and so the disease
spreads.
The Founders, like other criminals, were
once children, presumably innocent of all
but jam stealing. They have grown TO TINS
hideous degree in bounderism through what
Stevenson calls "capftulation to their
friends and have taken to the thing in self
defense.
And it is all intensely Americana part
of what we describe as cosmopoAtan-'an
evil that we have allowed to grow and
have nourished by our weakness; a wee
that does away with ordinary decency, not
to speak of the courtesies of life, and Kills
at once the dignity that should hedge
home.
Even in the very worst sets abroad, in
Paris, London, Vienna, Budapest, Berlin
the very cradles of real vice, where they
are busy inVenting new and beautiful SINS
that We shall not even suspect In this gen
eration-they know nothing OF this poun-
derism.
For the English bounder is pathetic and
even the cab horses knew him by sight.
He never gets anywhere. The English Be-
hernia is part of the kings circle, and
even the poor girls of Pceadilly have their
homes. with flowers in the window, where
they keep up a sad attempt at what they
call side
The Partisan demi-mondaine has a code
of etiquette rigid that of duchess, and
BalZac and Daudet and Henri Murger have
made US familiar with the simpler types,
commanding mystefiously the courtesy OF
adj men.
These are the circles in which one would
naturally look for bounderism, but when
1t does not penetrate these 1t can be readily
understood that no real home abroad would
tolerate the rowdyism that Is becoming so
prevalent with us that anything else seems
slow,
American bounderism was born the devil
knows where, nurtured in what we call
Bohemia" and finally flourishes under our
very noses, and no matter how high in the
air we may hold them the whoop la goes
on merrily, for 1t takes more than that TO
discourage a bounder.
We are letting the Founders play horse
with our sense of what is right and no
matter how Disguised we may think we
are we are growing bounderesque ourselves,
for 1t is inevitable You can't strike a gem
tleman loafer on the cheek with a rose and
crush him. A pig sticker would be more
fitting weapon! And SO we find ourselves
meeting him on his own ground
~
When that time came that the Four Hun
dred marched into the mouth of hell and
came back-not the Four Hundred then,
but the Smart Set--that time marked the
letting down of the bars and the sarging in
of the bounder idea. Clubs do not smile On
the bounder,S and long-suffering men rage
and fume helplessly while their wives and
daughters receive callers at II at night.
when the cafes have grown dull or the
bnunder has been thrown out of some con-
sentative bar room.
Women make the social life of this and
every other nation. They made the courts
OF the Louis brilliant and bad and the Vie
torian era stupid and good; but there were
no Founders IN either epoch. It remained
for us to produce the breed and then allow
it to go abroad. labeled American.
We need a occasional In our march of
Billy Baxtefism. 1t is pretty state Of
things when men, and women. too, of social
position, sometimes business rating and
standing In the arts cultivate the gentle
MANNERS Of the sly. We are mentally nau-
like to know If they only had the ffrat con-
eeptfon 81 that tine thing for want of d hat