And we are only at the beginning. The “Anglo-Saxon Alliance” between the English upper class and the American aspirants to be thought “upper class,” the dragging in of the rich American pilgrim out of the fog to the cheeriest corner of the English fire, these are matters of yesterday. And already Paris gets but a glance from the rich Americans, and the most foresighted of Paris shopkeepers are establishing London branches for the “Anglo-Saxon” American who no longer can spare the time from his or her English social duties to make the outfitting trip across the English Channel. To-morrow--The English hearth is large; there is room on it for every presentable or hope-inspiring American who can afford to cross the Atlantic; and the news of the jollity of the London season and of the round of English house parties is spreading in America and is attracting the pretentious society of all the large American cities. The “Alliance” is indeed booming. It is not through English aversion to the Atlantic voyage that, though we are the sought, we go to the home of the seeker to be sought. The English upper classes would come to us if we insisted upon it, although the item of expense looks larger to them than to us. But we do not insist upon it. Our “leisure class” is made far more comfortable in England than it is at home. America has no such facilities as has England for amusing sheer idleness in ways that are not undisguisedly inane. Through several centuries, the filling in of the idle hours of professional idlers has been a study there; the houses, the streets, the theatres, the restaurants, the whole social system is adapted to it. Further, the American can feel so “tall,” can believe so thoroughly in his own aristocracy and aloofness above the general run of mankind when there are three thousand miles of barren water between him in his grandeur and the shop where he worked as a “clark,” or the cabin where his father was born, or the back yard where his mother, in gingham, hung out the wash. Thus, the Americans in search of “the high life” for which they yearn prefer to go to it rather than to have it brought to them.