It is somehow generally assumed--for the most part unconsciously and without any formulation of the notion in the individual mind--that American society is a sort of truncated pyramid: that it is cut off short--stops in mid-air--before it gets to the top. Because there are no titles in the United States, therefore there are no Upper Classes; because there is no Aristocracy therefore there is nothing that corresponds to the individual Aristocrat.[309:1] If there were a peerage in the United States, the country would have its full complement of Dukes, Marquises, Earls, Viscounts, and the rest. And--this is the point--they would be precisely the same men as lead America to-day;--but how differently Englishmen would regard them! The middle-class Englishman, when he says that he is no respecter of titles and declares that it does not make any difference to him whether a man be a Lord or not, may think he is speaking the truth. It is even conceivable that there are some so happily constituted as to be able to chat equally unconcernedly with a Duke and with their wife's cousin, the land agent. Such men, I presume, exist in the British middle classes. But the fact remains that in the mass and, as it were, at a distance the effect of titles on the imagination of the British people is extraordinarily powerful. That the men in America are precisely the same men, though they have no titles, as they would be if they had, is best shown by the example of Americans who have crossed the Canadian border. If Sir William Van Horne had not gone to Canada in 1881 or thereabouts, he would still be plain "Bill" Van Horne and just as wonderful a man as he is to-day. On the other hand if fortune had happened to place Mr. James J. Hill a little farther north--in Winnipeg instead of in St. Paul--it is just as certain that he would to-day be Lord Manitoba (or some such title) as that his early associates George Stephen and Donald Smith are now Lord Mount Stephen and Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal. But somehow--it were useless to deny it--Englishmen would think of him as quite a different man. Mr. C. M. Hays in Montreal is still what he was in St. Louis--Charlie Hays. He will not change his nature when he becomes Lord Muskoka.