During the last twenty years our population has been passing through a period of awakening in regard to the usages of civilized countries, with the result that the public point of view has been astonishingly readjusted. The people are, so to speak, tumbling over each other in their haste to adopt Old World social customs, and the paragrapher who tells us that the wife of the Chief Magistrate wears blue novelty silk waists to the theatre, made by one of her familiar friends, makes a point of assuring us that the dressmaker in question is herself "a leading society woman." Our public press is rife with society cant and society gossip, and justifies the practice on the plea that the plain people are absorbed in the contemplation of the doings and the dresses of those whom they know only by hearsay, even as an Englishwoman will run the risk of apoplexy in order to catch a passing glimpse of her sovereign. Of this appetite for social tittle-tattle, the wealthy class seems disposed to take every advantage, pluming itself on its new importance to the point where it is constantly trying to devise some new extravagance or inanity. But this is not the spirit of the United States, nor are these the best Americans. Our nation is strange in this respect. We wear our faults upon our sleeves, or rather we suffer a surface population to belie us in various walks of life. That is the reason why the foreigners who come over here and try to amass the materials for a book in a few months fail to understand us as we really are. They are led by superficially prominent indications to believe many things which are true only of a limited portion of the population, and they fail to perceive the sturdiness of character, the independence of view, and the social charm which distinguishes a large and constantly increasing portion of the American people, who are neither extravagant plutocrats nor vulgar republican braggarts and despisers of civilized practices.