Lady Betty Across the Water

								

"Oh! Are they Republicans or Democrats?" I enquired, sure that I really
was being intelligent at last, for I'd heard Stan say that, in America,
the Republican party was rather like our Conservatives, and the
Democrats like the Liberals; and I'd remembered because I believe I
should be very much interested in politics if only I understood more
about them. But Sally seemed to think that question funny, too.
"They can be either, my poor lamb," she exclaimed; "and they can be
almost anything else they like, if only they're just awfully,
dreadfully rich, and can manage to scrape up a family crest. It used to
be the crest that counted, with the man who invented the Four Hundred;
but since his day, that idea has got buried under heaps and heaps of
gold, and pearls and diamonds; especially pearls. In those places I was
telling you about, you don't exist unless you're in the Four Hundred,
which is now being sifted down to Two Hundred, and will probably be
Seventy-five in a year or two. You may have the bluest blood in America
in your veins; you may be simply smeared with ancestors, but if you
haven't managed to push forward in a clever, indescribable way, neither
they nor you will ever be noticed, and your grey hairs will go down to
the grave in the Wrong Set. Now do you understand why my cousin
Katherine makes narrow eyes for some people, and broad smiles for
others?"
"Ye-es, I suppose I do," I answered. "Only--we are quite different at
home. I haven't been about at all yet, but I know; because some things
are in the air. How did Mrs. Stuyvesant-Knox ever have the poor Wrong
Setters for acquaintances, though?"
"Because (she'd kill me if she heard this) she has only lately got into
the Right Set herself, and after trouble enough to give an ordinary
woman nervous prostration. That kind of thing does give it to a lot
of women--especially if they fail. But Cousin Katherine very seldom
fails. She almost always carries things through. If you knew anything
about America in general, and New York in particular, you'd be able to
realise what a hard time she's had, when I tell you that till her
husband died she lived west of Chicago. To get into the Four Hundred if
you've lived west of Chicago, (unless you're Californian, which is
getting to be fashionable), is just like having to climb over one of
those great, high walls of yours in England, bristling with nails or
broken glass."
"My goodness!" I exclaimed. "How funny! Fancy if people who live in
Surrey should glare at people who live in Devonshire."
"That's different. You see, Chicago is new."
"But so is all America, isn't it?" I asked, stupidly. "What difference
can a hundred or so years make?"
"We haven't begun to think in centuries yet, on our side of the water,
my deah." (She has the most delicious way of saying "my deah," and all
her "r's" are soft like that; only it's too much trouble to write them
for nobody but myself to see.) "Anyhow, it is so, between New York