The "Goldfish": Being the Confessions af a Successful ManTrain, Arthur Cheney
General
The "Goldfish": Being the Confessions af a Successful Man
Train, Arthur Cheney
Leisure class; Wealth -- Moral and ethical aspects
The feet of these young men carry them to strange places; they cope with
many and strange monsters. They are our Knights of the Round Table. They
find the Grail of Achievement in lives of hard work, simple pleasures
and high ideals--in college and factory towns; in law courts and
hospitals; in the mountains of Colorado and the plains of the Dakotas.
They are the best we have; but the poor rich girl rarely, if ever, meets
them. The barrier of wealth completely hems her in. She must take one of
those inside or nothing.
When, in a desperate revolt against the artificiality of her existence,
she breaks through the wall she is easy game for anybody--as likely to
marry a jockey or a professional forger as one of the young men of her
desire. One should not blame a rich girl too much for marrying a titled
and perhaps attractive foreigner. The would-be critic has only to step
into a Fifth Avenue ballroom and see what she is offered in his place to
sympathize with and perhaps applaud her selection. Better a year of
Europe than a cycle of--shall we say, Narragansett? After all, why not
take the real thing, such as it is, instead of an imitation?
I believe that one of the most cruel results of modern social life is
the cutting off of young girls from acquaintanceship with youths of the
sturdy, intelligent and hardworking type--and the unfitting of such
girls for anything except the marriage mart of the millionaire.
I would give half of all I possess to see my daughters happily married;
but I now realize that their education renders such a marriage highly
difficult of satisfactory achievement. Their mother and I have honestly
tried to bring them up in such a way that they can do their duty in that
state of life to which it hath pleased God to call them. But
unfortunately, unless some man happens to call them also, they will have
to keep on going round and round as they are going now.
We did not anticipate the possibility of their becoming old maids, and
they cannot become brides of the church. I should honestly be glad to
have either of them marry almost anybody, provided he is a decent
fellow. I should not even object to their marrying foreigners, but the
difficulty is that it is almost impossible to find out whether a
foreigner is really decent or not. It is true that the number of foreign
noblemen who marry American girls for love is negligible. There is
undoubtedly a small and distinguished minority who do so; but the
transaction is usually a matter of bargain and sale, and the man regards
himself as having lived up to his contract by merely conferring his
title on the woman he thus deigns to honor.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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