ABSTRACT
In the caricatures of the American which are so gladly drawn by the European, and so innocently believed in, there is generally, beside the shirt-sleeved clown who bawls "equality" and the barbarian who chases the dollar, the rich heiress bent on swapping her millions for a coronet. Even the newspapers lightly smile at such marriages to a title, and they are becoming less and less frequent in the really best circles of American society. Besides, no such cheap and superficial aspirations are really indicative of aristocratic tendencies. The American is, by principle, very far from making his way into the international aristocracy of Europe, and he neither does nor will he ever attempt any artificial imitation of aristocratic institutions. Aristocratic shadings can occur in a country that is so firmly grounded in democracy only when the movement goes in both directions, upward and downward, and when it evolves on both sides.
