into the business history of every man who asks me to his house.  And even if I know he has been a crook, I cannot afford to stir up an unpleasantness by attempting in my humble way to make him feel sorrow for his misdeeds.  If I did I might find myself alone—­deserted by the rest of the aristocracy who are concerned less with his morality than with the vintage of his wine and the dot he is going to give his daughter.

The methods by which a newly rich American purchases a place among our nobility are simple and direct.  He does not storm the inner citadel of society but at the start ingratiates himself with its lazy and easy-going outposts.  He rents a house in a fashionable country suburb of New York and goes in and out of town on the “dude” train.  He soon learns what professional people mingle in smart society and these he bribes to receive him and his family.  He buys land and retains a “smart” lawyer to draw his deeds and attend to the transfer of title.  He engages a fashionable architect to build his house, and a society young lady who has gone into landscape gardening to lay out his grounds.  He cannot work the game through his dentist or plumber, but he establishes friendly relations with the swell local medical man and lets him treat an imaginary illness or two.  He has his wife’s portrait painted by an artist who makes a living off similar aspirants, and in exchange gets an invitation to drop in to tea at the studio.  He buys broken-winded hunters from the hunting set, decrepit ponies from the polo players, and stone griffins for the garden from the social sculptress.

A couple of hundred here, a couple of thousand there, and he and his wife are dining out among the people who run things.  Once he gets a foothold, the rest is by comparison easy.  The bribes merely become bigger and more direct.  He gives a landing to the yacht club, a silver mug for the horse show, and an altar rail to the church.  He entertains wisely—­gracefully discarding the doctor, lawyer, architect and artist as soon as they are no longer necessary.  He has, of course, already opened an account with the fashionable broker who lives near him, and insured his life with the well-known insurance man, his neighbor.  He also plays poker daily with them on the train.

This is the period during which he becomes a willing, almost eager, mark for the decayed sport who purveys bad champagne and vends his own brand of noxious cigarettes.  He achieves the Stock Exchange Crowd without difficulty and moves on up into the Banking Set composed of trust company presidents, millionaires who have nothing but money, and the elite of the stockbrokers and bond men who handle their private business.