Some time afterward I was talking to a very prominent New York editor, and the conversation turned to millionaires, whereupon for about half an hour the editor agreeably recounted circumstantial stories of the turpitude of celebrated millionaires—­stories which he alleged to be authentic and undeniable in every detail.  I had to gasp.  “But surely—­” I exclaimed, and mentioned the man who had so favorably impressed me.

“Well,” said the editor, reluctantly, after a pause, “I admit he has the new sense of right and wrong to a greater extent than any of his rivals.”

I italicize the heart of the phrase, because it is italicized in my memory.  No words that I heard in the United States more profoundly struck me.  Yet the editor had used them quite ingenuously, unaware that he was saying anything singular!...  Since when is the sense of right and wrong “new” in America?

Perhaps all that the editor meant was that public spirit in its higher forms was growing in the United States, and beginning to show itself spectacularly here and there in the immense drama of commercial and industrial policies.  That public spirit is growing, I believe.  It chanced that I found the basis of my belief more in Chicago than anywhere else.

* * * * *

I have hitherto said nothing of the “folk”—­the great mass of the nation, who live chiefly by the exercise, in one way or another, of muscular power or adroitness, and who, if they possess drawing-rooms, do not sit in them.  Like most writers, when I have used such phrases as “the American people” I have meant that small dominant minority which has the same social code as myself.  Goethe asserted that the folk were the only real people.  I do not agree with him, for I have never found one city more real than another city, nor one class of people more real than another class.  Still, he was Goethe, and the folk, though mysterious, are very real; and, since they constitute perhaps five-sixths of the nation, it would be singular to ignore them.  I had two brief glimpses of them, and the almost theatrical contrast of these two glimpses may throw further light upon the question just discussed.

I evaded Niagara and the Chicago Stock-yards, but I did not evade the “East Side” of New York.  The East Side insisted on being seen, and I was not unwilling.  In charge of a highly erudite newspaper man, and of an amiable Jewish detective, who, originally discovered by Colonel Roosevelt, had come out first among eighteen hundred competitors in a physical examination, my particular friend and I went forth one intemperate night to “do” the East Side in an automobile.  We saw the garlanded and mirrored core of “Sharkey’s” saloon, of which the most interesting phenomenon was a male pianist who would play the piano without stopping till 2.30 A.M.  With about two thousand other persons, we had the privilege of shaking hands with Sharkey.  We saw another saloon, frequented by murderers who