The Birmingham age-herald., 1906-11-04
UNHAPPY EXPRESSES
BY E.I. MONKS.

The American girl with money marries
 the Englshman or Frenchman with a
 title; she gets the husbands title and
 keeps her own money. There is the cause
 of all this trouble between these mar
 ried people whose names head the sen
 sational stories told in the newspapers.
 From the day these people first meet.
 whether it be in Newport or Naples, the
 governing question, if not exactly be-
 tween the parties themselves, certainly
 between their friends and families, is
 money, money, money. The whole pro-
 ceedings are sordid from start to finish.
 The impoverished patrician and the
 plebian plutocrat are neither socially nor
 naturally suited to each other; their edu-
 cation tastes and manners differ as does
 night from day, and yet people wonder
 or pity or blame, according as their
 fancies run. when they hear or read of
 a separation between parties who never
 were truly unHed.
 The number of European noblemen who
 marry American heiresses Is merely a
 fraction in comparison with the number
 who marry in their own set, and yet 1t
 is the fractional part that furnishes all
 the gossip and scandal, the fusses and
 fights. and always over the same subject
 money.
 Does the rich American girl eyer ask
 herself as she contempiates the offer of
 marriage made by duke or an earl whether her suitor is seeking her hand or her purse? Does she ever pause to con slider that there are marriageable ladies in that mans own set who will regard her as having bought her way into their circle and that she ought to pay the price? It is stated that Marlborough once spoke of his wife as the little parvenu and that she was so regarded in aristo- cratic circles in England owing to the fact that she tried to outshne her rivals by the display of her wealth, and her expensive entertainments.
 Generally the American girl has a brother or father who acts in the capac- | ty of guardian over her expenditures who knows how money is earned and | whose sole object in life is to earn more. 1 This guardians tastes or education do not 1 tend to make him patron Of the arts and sciences. He will sanction the pur- chase of diamonds and jewels because 1 they can always be depended upon to | realize very nearly what they originally cost, but statuary or pictures or archi- | lecture are doubtful assets. An artisticaly l and elegantly furnished home does not appeal to the new-rich as eloquently as does the pompous display of gaud and | glitter which will take two columns of | a yellow journal to describe. The people who give monkey dinners and horse birth | day parties are not the people to rest content in the iyied chateaus or quiet | seclusion of patriclan life.
 In Europe, the difference between the l "gentleman' and the business man is | this: The gentleman spends money the business man makes money. It Is not a l matter of manners, as some suppose, it Is l simply a question of how money is re- garded No English gentleman is supposed | to know where his money comes from :; | he does not know what his kitchen costs | him: he never audts the housekeeper's s accounts He knows what bets he has on l his books, he knows a good cigar and | nrobably the "premiere danseuse" in the corps de ballet; beyond these things his knowledge very seldom extends How then can such man tolerate the humiliation | of being called down by a brother-n-law | or A father er-in-law who denounces his ex- l travagances and threatens to cut off his revenue Then milady hopes to effect a reformation in this spendthrift husband 1 of hers by closing the source of reve- l mes. when he immediately finds out and | she A little later, that the bond of unity | between them was made of yellow metal. a little bit of which had been bent into | the shape of ring.
 | The advice old Nokomis gave to Hia-