Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1912-01-07
THERE is popular belief that in these days
you cannot arrive anywhere unless you


you cannot arrive anywhere unless you
employ strenuous and even violent meth
DDS. Success is best attained by holdup. In
fiction, the dashing highwayman is the favorite
hero. On the stage, the gentleman with peni-
tertiary past cracks safe with the lirnelight full
upon him, and has dozen curtain calls. Football
tactics and the traditions of the ring the order
of the hour. We bow down before the artist who
knows best the telling effect of solar plexus blow
and you are "catapulted' into finance you are the
Dick Turpin of Wall Street-and unless you use
jimmy you cannot even break into society.
| have been asked. holding the reputation of
veteran and an inside man, to give few suggeS-
tons to the best methods of action to those who
are contemplating social burglary. There are no
set rules, and | can furnish only some bits of adj
vice as to prelmnaries. When the ground is well
known, it will be an easy matter to go ahead. If
chance has any power, it plays an important part.
l can also add that the adventure is one of some
hazard, and that the road IS full of pitfalls. 1t
requires much preparation You must lay your
plans carefully before making the final sprint At
first you must not aim too high, and you must
watch every point
will waive all discussion as to the ethical defini-
ton of society. Let it be conceded that 1t is of
the genus and species Ne7v York as seen in the
society columns of certain metropolitan Sunday
newspapers and celebrated with much lavishness
of description and no little power of imagination
by an army of special writers. Long before we
see the actors themselves, are led to know all
and when we actually behold them in the flesh
they seem like old and familiar friends.
But perhaps after you have broken in you may
find that these lurid word paintings only
snares and decisions, and that these wonderful
people and their talk, table and otherwise are
commonplace and ordinary, "just like other folk
In our early days there existed volume of
moral tales in which was contained the sad
periences of Rosamond. She was dear prig of a
child and lived in London, and at the corner of the
street which she resided there chemists
shop, with bright pink and green crystal vases in
the windows. These are the same kind you always
find advertising the place where physic is dis
pensed RoSamond coveted them, and begged her
mama to buy them for her for her birthday. In
vain did her worthy parent warn her that things
were seldom what they seemed. However, she
bought them for her daughter. When they were
brought home, Rosamond found they were filled
with some nasty looking fluid, which she quickly
poured out-and, behold! there remained only
two common glass jars. The contents were colored
chemicals, and it was the lights rejecting through
the jars that supplied the illusion. Rosamond,
according to the standards of that era, melted
into tears. and Mama found golden opportunity
to lmpart lesson.
And SO we must dismiss our second hand inn
pressons, rose tinted and otherwise.
New York society is composed of conglomer-
alton of individuals without much attention to
previous condition few of the climbers are
Western multimillionaires; but they are now in
the minority. During the last year there has been
some lively hustling from such remote points as
North Philadelphia, Brooklyn, Texas, and
Canada. Chicago and Pittsburgh have been ex-
hausted, and the Pacific Coast has had repre-
sentation in numbers for the last generation. In
the most fashionable quarters of town the race OF
old New Workers is fast disappearing. Among
those who reside Fifth-ave along the
splendid mile and half from the Metropolitan
Club to Andrew Carnegies HILL there are not
twenty families whose names were included in the
mythical Four Hundred list of the late Ward
McAllister. But some of these have amagamated
through matrimony with the newcomers, and
among the latter many who, having succeeded
in their home towns, have come to New York be
greater victories in fresh fields.
Some General Suggestions
f,11, g..