Again, Mrs. Fitznoodle, with several marriageable daughters, is constantly on the lookout for unwary young men, ignoring the fact of their want of brains, lack of breeding, and wholly regardless of the fact that they have no “family” connections, but she spreads her net and perhaps succeeds in catching this “eligible” young man.  Mrs. Fitzsnob immediately sees something in that young man to admire, and seeks his acquaintance, and much to his surprise, and to the surprise of everyone else, he finds himself for the first time in what is termed good society.  Now this Mrs. Fitzsnob is not a rara avis, but is frequently met with.  Yet how many ladies do we see?  We meet many calling themselves such, who do not hesitate to talk scandal, to injure their neighbors; to ridicule people, to accept of hospitality and comment ill-naturedly upon it, to talk slang.  All these things and more, people do who call themselves, ladies.  There are houses on which should be placed signs, as on pest houses, and whose occupants should be labelled “dangerous,” for their tongues are more dangerous than the sting of the adder, and they are in so-called “society.”  Heaven save the mark!

Woman, the most perfect of all God’s work, why do you not scourge society of scandal mongers, of snobs?  Why do you not dare to do what you think and know to be right?  Why will you allow yourselves to be ruled and guided by the opinion of others?  A woman’s instinct is her safest guide; if she follows it she will not err.

It is not women alone, who are tainted with snobbishness and shoddyism, but how frequently we see it in men, generally those who have very little brain and often in those whom the world calls self-made-men.  Now there is nothing in the world so aggressive as the same self-made-man.  The air with which he moves along, as though upon him depended the revolution of the world on its axis, and the safety and welfare of its inhabitants.  He never allows himself, nor others, to forget the fact that he is self-made.  The laborer, who, by dint of hard work and economy, has succeeded in making a little money; with what eagerness he tries to gain some petty office, and in a few years his daughters will tell us that they “belong to the old families.”  How much old families have got to answer for!  It would sound refreshing in this age of snobbery, to see some one who did not consider themselves “as belonging to one of the old families.”  The male snob has developed within the past year, into the dude.  By a process of evolution, which Darwin undoubtedly could have traced, we have him before us in all his beauty.  To commence, first, he must have a little money, with that he buys a tight fitting suit of clothes, a diamond ring, a gold headed cane, a very small hat, carries his arms akimbo, and in all the perfection of loveliness, he stands out, a thing apart from the rest of humanity.  Perhaps in two or three centuries, the process of evolution taking place all the time, something may be put into the small cranium, which will be called a “brain,” but it must evolute rapidly or the sun will have cooled, and there will be another glacial period before that event takes place.