palatial mansion and proclaim that fact to the public. The ostentation is altogether un-American. If he holds foreign titles in such contempt how came he to purchase one for himself of the Italian King? I am glad that the Pullman millions are to remain in America. They are the fruits of monopoly and a brutal grinding of the faces of the laboring people. Miss Pullman has been old enough to marry any time these ten years past. She is able to support a husband properly; hence I fail to see that the marriage is one whit more important than that of dozens of others that will be solemnized on the same day. The intellectual giants of the world are seldom begotten in gilded boudoirs. If Miss Florence feels the need of a man at her time of life, let her marry—while Papa Pullman makes an earnest effort to apply the soft pedal to himself. The people are growing aweary of this ostentatious impudence of wealth.

A mighty reform movement has been in progress for some years past among the "erring sisters,"”—many a wretched creature has been led by kindly hands out of the foul atmosphere of lust into the radiant light. The world still moves, and, despite the ipse dixit of Solomon, there's something new under the sun. I once held to the theory that it was as impossible to reform a public prostitute as to make a savory omelet of a rotten egg-that all the well-meant effort of those noble ladies who go as missionaries among them, was but love's labor lost. It was a dreadful theory, but apparently fully justified by conditions. The Matron of one of the best known houses of refuge in America had said to me, with tears, that she doubted much if all her earnest labor to uplift the fallen has resulted in one bona-fide reformation. Now hundreds of "girls" are voluntarily abandoning their evil business,

while not a few keepers of disreputable dives have closed their establishments and are striving to reclaim those whom they once helped to degrade. It is enough to make even a hardened sinner join in the hosannahs. But is this bad old world actually growing better-are these reformations real? I do not know. I have before me a letter from the Madame of a notorious maison de joie. The former says "Poverty is the scourge which drives women into prostitution, and it has become the lash which is driving them out. Never before, perhaps, in the history of this city, were so many women trying to subsist on the fruits of their shame. Many find it impossible, and must seek more respectable employment or starve. Reformation, so-called, induces the ladies to find these poor creatures employment." Not very encouraging, truly; still the fact that, for some reason, women do come out of the depths, is just cause for rejoicing. The letter of the Matron merits the serious consideration of sociologists, while that of the Madame seems to call for carbolic acid. The latter says: "So we are reforming, are we? Sure! We're being starved out by the competititon of 'respectable' prostitutes. I made a great mistake in opening a house instead of becoming a leader in swell society. I think I'll get a coat of moral whitewash, turn my place into a laundry and give my girls a chance to make bread and butter washing the dirty linen of fashionable w-s." Perhaps the Madame is too hard on society's "hupper suckles; "but it is noticeable that her explanation of the success of the reformers has much in common with that of the eminently practical, if too pessimistic Matron. It will also be remarked by the study of social phenomena, that the number of prominent business and professional men who frequent places of ill-repute becomes appreciably smaller year by year. Is a successful reform movement in progress among the male debauchees likewise?

It is to be hoped so; still, the number of " scandals in high life" and divorces granted on the ground of adultery; the noticeable lack of confidence which women of fashion have in the virtue of their dearest friends, and the consensus of opinion that society is becoming daily more corrupt, are not encouraging signs.

***

OUR CODFISH ARISTOCRACY.

"POETS are born, not made," says the proverb, but the reverse is true of the American autocrat-of all autocrats in fact, for the new-got brat of most Serene Highness, lying in its costly crib and wildly yooping with cholera infantum, is but a barbarian. However sacred it will be in the worshipful eyes of man, the misplaced diaper-pin is no respecter of persons, but gets in its graft as readily on youthful royalty as with the Populist babe, fed with a wooden spoon and rocked in a soap-box. The American aristocracy is based altogether upon boodle, that of brains being still undreamed of in our philosophy. It matters little whether one's parents were people of culture or Digger Indians; whether they were deified or damned, if he but have the "dough." It matter even less whether he accumulated wealth in a learned profession or as a public scavenger, by genius or jackassery, by transforming the wilderness into happy homes or fattening upon the misfortunes of his fellows, if he but have it. In America the successful soap-boiler stands upon the same social level with the prosperous exponent of law-higher if he have more lucre. Those before whom the common herd are expected to make lowest salaam are not the Edisons and Franklins, the Fields and Irvings; but the Astors and Vanderbilts, the Goulds and Mackays-people guiltless of all intelligence

except the vulpine instinct, and having nothing to recommend them but that money which Prof. Agassiz was "too busy to make." The Astor fortune was founded by a

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trader in the skins of polecats, the Vanderbilt by the economy of a Dutch fishwife, the Gould by a peddler of mousetraps and the Mackay by a streak of bull luck that lifted its proprietors above the necessity of peddling beer over a pine bar and engineering a miners' boarding-house. The wand of Fortune easily transforms a stable-boy or scullion into a social Cæsar. But while good money atones for bad breeding, and brains are at a discount in our social world unless chaperoned by boodle, we yield a servile worship to titles, even though no longer synonyms of power. Like our British cousins, we "dearly love a lord"-bow and scrape even to the bogus titles of the erstwhile French nobility." We care naught for the descendants of Burns or Shakespeare; those of Dante or Socrates would stand outside our higher social pale that enclosed the "big rich," unless they could unlock the gate with a key of gold; but before the rotting spawn of titled pimps and coroneted courtesans our boodle aristocracy bows itself to the very dust. America has much to say anent "equality of man," "nobilty of nature," etc.; but if there is any spot on earth where wealth instead of "worth makes the man, and want of it fellow," that place is the land of the political crank and home of the shoe-string evangelist. If there is a people on the great round earth ever ready to lick the boots of royalty, pruriently hungry for class distinction, eagerly aping European nobility, it is that composite congeries of bipeds over which the Star-Spangled Banner ostentatiously floats and flaps,-foolishly enough for the most part. Our very trades-people are infected with the itch for coats-of-arms and other heraldic mummery and offensive nonsense; can scarce wait until, by as

siduous trading in tripe and tape, they can afford to keep a coach and mount thereon a straddling biped with a wilderness of big buttons and parade themselves before all men, strengthening the bold hypothesis of Darwin! Think of it, ye foolish orators who churn the mephitic air at state conventions; ye "able editors" grinding out interminable "takes" of dry rot anent the dignity of American manhood. Even in our chief Texas villages (ambitiously aspiring to become cities that the "unearned increment" of the land-grabber may be increased thereby) the successful merchant,—the man who, by assiduously drawing of vinegar and scooping of brown sugar and tenpenny nails, measuring of molasses and bed-ticking and other like useful but lowly services, has acquired wealthemploys one of his fellow citizens (his equal according to the blessed constitution), gets him up in the outlandish gear of a European flunkey and commands him to drive him about that his fellow townsmen may behold and envy him! He is now a member of the yard-stick and sugarscoop aristocracy! He is now a great man, privileged to make an ass of himself- -as if nature did not render effort in that direction superfluous on his part, did he but know it.

Most wonderful of our social phenomena is our boodle aristocracy, wherein the successful trader, the fortunate speculator, miner and other quick-rich people vie with each other in ostentatious and vulgar display. A title of nobility the sugar-scoop or soapfat aristocrat cannot purchase for himself, the blessed constitution standing in the way; but he can at least hire a man to call him "colonel!" mayhap, if the bidding be not too brisk, buy himself a seat in the United States Senate, and, using this as a lever, pry his family into touch with the European aristocracy based upon birth and wanting brains. Nay, if his purse be long