The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1912-03-04
SOCIETY IN SOCIAL ExCESSES
 MRS. ROBINSON ON THE "SNOB"

l l other people, but there should be add
 ed the connotation that this same wo-
 man despairingly realizes that she is i not as good as somebody else. Snob- bery is frequently shown in other fields than the purely social" contin- | ued Mrs. Robinson.
 | '"Then there is the literary snob
 who sits in the seat of the scornful at the musical comedy to which some | low-brow friend has ventured to es-
 cort her. and hurls whitening para graphs from Nietzsche at some poor
 Longfellow. The literary snob doesn't
 really understand good writing, any
 more than the social snob understands | good manners. She is usually little
 read and less educated. But that doesn't bother her any. She knows
 few sensational quotations, and she brandishes them over the heads of humber folk exactly as certain other ladies brandish the names of their
 distinguished society friends at a
 family dinner party.
 l "Of course everybody knows that
 there is no snob who rules more in flexib1y than the despot of the sewing i circle in a small country village. She 1 vigorously crushes down insurrections and will never countenance the intro
 duction of those shiftless Browns in- l to the sacred precincts of them that
 make red flannel petticoa ts for poor | heathen.'' f@ ss*
 But for 6 pain little wreath from
 a friend of the late "Jim' Fisk, who
 knew her in tho days when she was
 one of the reigning beauties of New
 York, the death the other day of 1 Lucy D. Fisk. widow of the one time
 Gould, might have been said to have gone unnoticed. Practically all of
 the friends of Fisk have passed away
 and few remain who can recall except
 as dim memory the circumstances l attending his assassination at the
 hands of Edward c. Stokes.
 l Stokes himself has been dead some l twelve years and Josie Mansfield, the 1 fascinating woman, over whose favor the two men Quarreled, has been molH- dering in quiet suburban church yard for an even longer period
 Of the moving factors in the sensa- tional tragedy, which stirred the na-
 tion forty years ago, the one to sur vfve all the others was the woman up- on whom the pain and burden fell heaviest. Although Fisk and Gould were equal partners in the profits of the great railroad and other promo
 tfon enterprises in which they were
 interested, Fisk left comparatively lit
 tie, except reputation as a bold and
 fearless bucaneer of High Finance,
 while Gould bequeathed to his family
 $75, ,0O0, 900. Gould was the silent,
 shrewd man of the firm, who made it
 the practice of his life to never let the
 left hand know what the right was doing. Fisk on the other hand was
 the big, open, hail fellow we'll met member who made no effort to con- ceal his purposes. A handsome man, with a magnetic personality that at- tracted and charmed men as well as l. 1srl he was after, because most everybody liked him and was willing to help him. < An easy liver, generous to fault, he spent money like, water and was never deaf to the appeal of his friends for assistance. Gould on the contrary was grouchy, irascib1e, hard Of approach, donineering and adamant to the touch" of men looking for help. To this difference in the char acter. of the two men was. due the wide disparity in their fortunes, when the bullets of Stokes on the grand staircase of the Broadway Central Hotel here cut short the brilliant ca lowing the murder, the widow of Fisk stood Loyalty by the memory of her husband and as far as she could pro tected it from the calumny of the friends of Stokes The fact that his death was the result of i'll feeling de-
 
 sorceeress, made no difference to her she preferred to remember Fisk as the gallant warm hearted, sincere lover of her youth Nothing any body could say about him could affect her. And with this cherished mem o,ry as her one priceless possession; she sold the big house in the city and its furnishings and moved away into the country. There in comparative poverty, alone and forgotten, she lived until the other day when she ex- pired.
 Misfortune continues to pursue the members of the Stock Exchange firm of Van Schaick & Co.,, which failed a little more than a year ago with an excess of liabilities over assets of a1- most million dollars. Following the blowing up of the firm, which was one of the oldest and most respected in Wall street, having been in busi- ness for half a century, William H. Jackson, its treasurer, was slain in his hotel bedroom by a bell boy bent on robbery. At the time of the fail ure of the house the two principal partners were John B. Van Schaick and Derby Crandall. The latter had 9rginaly orig en been an aasn office boy in the succeeded his father as the head of the concern took Crandall in as his partner. With the collapse of their business, Mrs. Van Schaick started proceedings for divorce against her husband and was allowed $1,000 a month alimony from him. Recently Van Schaick has been backwards in his payments and his former wife has had him up in court to compel him to continue them. Following the ex- ample of Van Schaick's wife, Mrs. Crandall last week began an action for divorce against her husband. She leges that Crandall left her without cause last April. Both partners claim to be now broke and are fighting the attempts of their wives to collect I from them. They say they are living ! mostly on borrowed money and cannot | comply with the orders of the court | because they. are not working and l have no source of income.
 At last they have discovered what l it is that is responsible for the high | strung nerves of the American wo- | men and the increase in neurotic dis 1 inable clothes, is the cause Of it, says Dr. Jane Baker, lecturer of the School | of Hygiene, of which Mrs O. H. P. Belmont: is one of the sponsors. < +"Unquestionably the nervous dis eases and many of the other physical l troubles of the modern woman are due to her foolish manner of dress ng,'' says Dr. Baker. ''The kind of clothes she wears and the way she wears them would strain the strong est natural constitution.
 .All clothing which is so elaborate and so fussily put together that it's hiJt hA |