A fashionable woman sails for Europe--more than five thousand dollars’ worth of flowers, jewels, books, things to eat and drink, go to the steamer on sailing day from her friends. A young couple are married--their intimates and relatives give them three-quarters of a million in wedding gifts. A brother meets his sister on her way downstairs on the morning of her birthday--“Here is a little gift for you,” he says, pausing just long enough to hand her a paper. It makes her the owner of a million in gilt-edged securities. A husband comes home from the office--“I’ve put through my deal,” he says. “You can have your new house, but I won’t stand for more than a million and a half.” A father calls his son into his study and says, “You will be twenty-one to-morrow. I fix your allowance at seventy-five thousand dollars a year.” A doctor goes to a banker to get a small subscription for a new hospital--“Why not build a new hospital?” asks the banker. “I’ll give a million. If that’s not enough I’ll give two.” It is amazing how many great and beautiful palaces of a kind such as is occupied by our multi-millionaire are being added yearly to New York’s fashionable quarter. And there is not a single palace in New York that is comfortable. No way has yet been devised for making them otherwise than chilly and draughty. The human animal is too small for such huge surroundings; and there are not enough competent servants or even competent available housekeepers to make the domestic machinery run smoothly. The new millionaires slip into New York, into their new palaces, attracting little attention. Men with a scant million or two are coming all the time unobserved. If it were not necessity that drove them here, many of them would doubtless become angry at their insignificance and would go where less money gives distinction. But the rapid concentration of the directing forces of the business of the country in Manhattan Island compels them to yield to the entreaties of their wives and daughters and remain. Scores of these palace owners have or seem to have no way of getting acquainted with anybody whatsoever. There are millionaires’ families that stare drearily out of the windows, bored to death in their isolation, and wishing they were back in the Western town where they used to have lots of fun. There are others who give entertainments in the vast rooms of their palaces at which you will find their clerks, a few nondescripts male and female, and no others--these standing or strolling awkwardly about, trying to forget that they are miserable in reflecting on the cost of the pictures and the decorations. In the surroundings above outlined, how could anyone, whether newly rich or long rich, lead other than a sordid life? Money is there necessarily the basis of all action, the determiner of the complexion of every thought.