It may be, and probably is, the fact that comparatively small fortunes still tend to disintegrate.  This was certainly the rule during the first half of the nineteenth century in New England, when there was no such thing as a distinctly moneyed class, and when the millionaire was a creature only of romance.  But when, as to-day, fortunes are so large that it is impossible to spend or even successfully give away the income from them, a new element is introduced that did not exist when Doctor Holmes used to meditate in his study on the Back Bay overlooking the placid Charles.

At the present time big fortunes are apt to gain by mere accretion what they lose by division; and the owner of great wealth has opportunities for investment undreamed of by the ordinary citizen who must be content with interest at four per cent and no unearned increment on his capital.  This fact might of itself negative the tendency of which he speaks; but there is a much more potent force working against it as well.  That is the absolute necessity, induced by the demands of modern metropolitan life, of keeping a big fortune together—­or, if it must be divided, of rehabilitating it by marriage.

There was a time not very long ago when one rarely heard of a young man or young woman of great wealth marrying anybody with an equal fortune.  To do so was regarded with disapproval, and still is in some communities.  To-day it is the rule instead of the exception.  Now we habitually speak in America of the “alliances of great families.”  There are two reasons for this—­first, that being a multi-millionaire is becoming, as it were, a sort of recognized profession, having its own sports, its own methods of business and its own interests; second, that the luxury of to-day is so enervating and insidious that a girl or youth reared in what is called society cannot be comfortable, much less happy, on the income of less than a couple of million dollars.

As seems to be demonstrated by the table of my own modest expenditure in a preceding article, the income of but a million dollars will not support any ordinary New York family in anything like the luxury to which the majority of our young people—­even the sons and daughters of men in moderate circumstances—­are accustomed.

Our young girls are reared on the choicest varieties of food, served with piquant sauces to tempt their appetites; they are permitted to pick and choose, and to refuse what they think they do not like; they are carried to and from their schools, music and dancing lessons in motors, and are taught to regard public conveyances as unhealthful and inconvenient; they never walk; they are given clothes only a trifle less fantastic and bizarre than those of their mothers, and command the services of maids from their earliest years; they are taken to the theater and the hippodrome, and for the natural pleasures of childhood are given the excitement of the footlights and the arena.