An artist who had lived many years of his life in Paris and London was speaking the other day of a curious phase he had remarked in our American life. He had been accustomed over there to have his studio the meeting- place of friends, who would drop in to smoke and lounge away an hour, chatting as he worked. To his astonishment, he tells me that since he has been in New York not one of the many men he knows has ever passed an hour in his rooms. Is not that a significant fact? Another remark which points its own moral was repeated to me recently. A foreigner visiting here, to whom American friends were showing the sights of our city, exclaimed at last: "You have not pointed out to me any celebrities except millionaires. 'Do you see that man? he is worth ten millions. Look at that house! it cost one million dollars, and there are pictures in it worth over three million dollars. That trotter cost one hundred thousand dollars,' etc." Was he not right? And does it not give my reader a shudder to see in black and white the phrases that are, nevertheless, so often on our lips? This levelling of everything to its cash value is so ingrained in us that we are unconscious of it, as we are of using slang or local expressions until our attention is called to them. I was present once at a farce played in a London theatre, where the audience went into roars of laughter every time the stage American said, "Why, certainly." I was indignant, and began explaining to my English friend that we never used such an absurd phrase. "Are you sure?" he asked. "Why, certainly," I said, and stopped, catching the twinkle in his eye. It is very much the same thing with money. We do not notice how often it slips into the conversation. "Out of the fullness of the heart the mouth speaketh." Talk to an American of a painter and the charm of his work. He will be sure to ask, "Do his pictures sell well?" and will lose all interest if you say he can't sell them at all. As if that had anything to do with it! Remembering the well-known anecdote of Schopenhauer and the gold piece which he used to put beside his plate at the _table d'hote_, where he ate, surrounded by the young officers of the German army, and which was to be given to the poor the first time he heard any conversation that was not about promotion or women, I have been tempted to try the experiment in our clubs, changing the subjects to stocks and sport, and feel confident that my contributions to charity would not ruin me.