Waterbury evening Democrat., 1906-03-22
BY MARGARET E. sANGsTER.

l of Greece and Rome.
 BY MARGARET E. sANGsTER.
 Those of US who are outside the smart set and who have no wish or ex- pectation ever to be within 1t, have of course only a 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 a rou..ne of duties and who are perfectly satisfied If we make both ends meet, and have a little over at the end of the year.
 It would not pc 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 women are 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 ws are thinking .-~ fr f.-l
 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 . small income with economy and makes bright her little home. y
 It is not what we have, but what wo are that makes true womanhood lively and charming A man may adminis- ter millions and be as good and true and honorable as the humblest clerk ill his employment. It is 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 devil, nor are sumptuous houses dens of iniquity.
 We who have no acquaintance with . the smart SC. except as the scciety c umn in the newspapers report it's go- ings to and fro, it's weddings, diyorces and remarriages, have recently been afforded peep at 1t 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 in this romance is distinctly depress- ing. Gathering about central figure, that of a beautiful orphan girl, are men and women who seem to have about as much of the milk of human kindness in .neir veins as wolves in pack. The women gamble. the 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 andswomen. -are. openly or. furtive- ly unfaithful to their marriage VOWS; a married man does not hesitate to take contemplate advantage of the helplessness of girl who has been his wife's intimate friend. Men sheer at virtue, think the worst of each other, and of the women who are their kin- dred. Chivalry is apparently a lost art. Honor is faint mirage on re. mote horizon. A girl incurs financial obligations from a man, and ..ence- forth becomes more and more entan- 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 SUD- 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, character who could decently pass muster among ordinary men and women, the two who are supposed to be patterns of goodness being slngu- larly destitute of humor and common sense.
 If the smart set be like this, so heartless. so corrupt, so cruel, our con clusion is that its career must be short. There is far too much essential reality in America to endure very long that which is wholly false and meretricious.
 We are fain to believe, however, that the picture is overdravn. There must be behind the silken portleres anu velvet hangings of these exquisite homes some who have kept unharmed fairer ideal. All the young women who go to French dressmakers and wear gowns that cost fortune are not like poor Lily Bart, who from baby hood had been taught that the only lie worth living was a life of display. and that 1t were better to die and bs 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 conjure with in the market, are not sordid and mean and rapaeious. Our Hebrew friends have right to protest against their representative in these pages that profess to depict with truth the suc- cessful climbing of one of their race to the perch which seemed to him a fit ng goal for his ambition Notvithstand- ing the melancholy muddle of it all. there must finger shreds of human kindness and commonplace goodness in