It was night, yet the streets were not deserted. Suddenly a window of the Ebbitt House was raised, a man stepped on to the balcony out of the window, and in clear, vigorous, and manly tones began to sing “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Windows were raised; the crowd collected around the Ebbitt House. It was the signal for the breaking of a dam. A flood of patriotism burst from the hearts of the hearers; it was the bugle note, calling upon Americans to save their country. Where there had been silence, were now outspoken vows of fidelity and loyalty to the Union. The battle was won that night; not at Gettysburg and Vicksburg[1]. Just so with the people of America in 1892; for years they have endured in silence, murmuring and thinking, heart to heart speaking by responsive heart throbs; not by word. The rich, who had accumulated their wealth by reason of monopolies which were the necessary consequence of the Civil War, men who had laid the foundation of their fortunes by speculating upon the necessities of the government while contending for the very existence of the Union, had, year by year, by a stealthy, yet ever-increasing presumption, begun to assume the possibility of a class distinction, presuming that the possession of wealth entitled them to privileges, and arrogating to themselves mannerisms of the titled classes of Europe, adopting crests, coats of arms, claiming descent from titled foreigners, an exclusiveness in their social relations, disregarding the laws of morality. The women of this would-be aristocratic class, flaunting their jewels and laces in the faces of their poorer sisters, with elevated noses, and garments drawn aside, feared to touch or gaze at the poor but honest mothers and wives of America. It was not much: it was rank presumption; it was nonsense, absurd. “There’s no such thing possible in America as class distinction; in fact, it does not exist, cannot exist; the ‘Four Hundred’ of New York is a joke, a by-word, a stupendous folly.” But, good people of the said “Four Hundred,” remember that while the American is neither a Socialist nor an Anarchist, when you presume to make a distinction, socially, between the poor man, his wife, children, and mother, you touch him in the most sensitive part of his being. You may have your villas at Newport, you may ape the English fashionable season in London by a similar one in New York; you may have your steam yachts; you may ride to hounds; your women may marry divorced dukes and puppified sons of lords; but, mark you, claim no privilege, attempt no distinction between yourselves and the poorest honest man and woman in the land. Equality is the jewel that every true American holds most dear. No free son of our Republic will sell this treasure for gold, whether it be offered directly as a bribe or shrewdly tendered under the guise of “protected” wages.