The Virginia enterprise. [volume] (Virginia, St. Louis County, Minn.) 1893-19??, 1906-04-06
TOUR 0 r SMART ! 4 / SOCIETY ! ! ETY.
Do NOT THINK RICHES AND3VIR
+', TUES CANNOT HARMoN1zE.

l. : s. "
Points Warning-America Must
Heed the Lesson or: Suffer the Fate
of Greece and Rome.
49BYsMARGARET E. SANGsTER.
Those of us who are outside the
smart set and who have no wish or ex-
pectations ever to be within it, have of
course only . vague, idea of the life it
leads. What is called the smart set
includes only few among the great
mass of Americans, most of us being
working people, to whom each day
brings routine of duties and who are
perfectly satisfied if we make both
ends meet, and have a little over at
| the end of the year. ::
1t would not be fair to say of the
smart set that it is composed of the
! idle rich. They, too, are in the minor
ity. A great many wealthy men and
womenaar anything but idle: They
toll as strenuously as the poorest they
! do a~great deal of good, often without
| Ostentation, and they are not even on
the edge of the set about whom we
! are thinking.
A woman may wear sables and dia-
monds, go to Europe every year, live
in great elegance and entertain royalty
| and still be as sweet and simple and
gentle as her neighbor who manages a
I small income with economy and makes
bright her little home.
1t is not what we have, but what we
are that makes true womanhood lively
and charming. A man may admins
ter millions and be as good and true
and honorable as the humblest clerk
in his employment. 1t is a dangerous
doctrine which teaches that the poor
are better than the rich, because of
their poverty, or the rich worse than
the poor because of their wealth. Au-
tomobiles are not inventions of the
OF iniquity. .
j. We who have no acquaintance with
the smart set except as the society CO.
umn in the newspapers report it's 60
lngs to and fro, its weddings, divorces
and remarriages, have recently been
afforded a peep at it in the pages of
a popular novel, said to be written
by one who has had special opportuni-
ties for knowing whereof she speaks
The; glimpse of the smart set given us
lin this romance is distinctly depress-
ing. Gathering about central figure,
that OF a. beautiful orphan girl, are
men, and. women who seem to have
q IF of
kindness in their veins as wolves in q
pack. The women gamble, rhe men do
worse. AS for any ethical Standard
if the House of Mirth'' is to be trust
ed, it does not exist in the smart set.
Men and women are openly or furtive-
ly unfaithful to their marriage VOWS;
a married man does not hesitate to
take a contemplate advantage Of the
helplessness of girl who has been his
wife's intimate friend Men .sneer at
virtue, think the worst OF each other,
and Of the women who are their kin
dred. Chivalry is apparently lost
art. Honor is faint mirage on re-
mote horizon. A girl incurs financial
obligations from man, and .nencs-
ocSSAAAS0
gled in a web of duplicity, and in
meshes which fatally ensnare her. Her
+ intentions are not evil, but her very
inability to- comprehend that any
values beyond those that are financial
are known in the world, complicates
the situation for her. Married women
write compromising letters to men
whom they meet socially, who are sfp-
posed to be friends of their husbands.
and in one case the man who is more
nearly gentleman than any other in
the book, simply tears such letters IN
two and losses them into the waste
basket. There is hardly, in the whole
story, a character who could decently
pass muster among ordinary men and
women: the two who are supposed to
be patterns of goodness being singu-
larly destitute of humor and common
sense:
IF the smart set be, like this, so,
3eartless, so corrupt, so cruel, our con-
aclusion is that it's career must be short.
There is far too much essential reality
an ssAmerica to endure very long shat
winch IS wholly false and meretficious.
o. .4$s&--
We are fam to believe, however
that the picture is overdrawn. There
must be behind the silken portieres,
anu az velvet hangings. of these. exquisite
homes some who have kept unharmed
fairer ideal. All the young women
who got French dreSsmokor. s,
wear gowns that cost a fortune are not
like ~ poor Lily Bart, who from ~bab,y-
hood had been taught that the * only
life worth living was q life of display.
and e 81 that it were better to die and. ,,be.
done with it than to be- out of the
fashion, All, the men who understand
the ups and downs of finance and
whose names are spells to tcon1uurre
with in the market, are not soardid and