Читать книгу The Reign of Gilt онлайн

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The quickest way to get at the reason for this curious state of affairs, that may seem to many a flamboyant jest rather than conservatively presented reality, is to look at the life of the typical New York multi-millionaire of the extravagant class. There are multi-millionaires, scores of them, who do not belong in this extravagant class; but there are not so many outside of it now as there were five years ago.

Our up-to-date, luxury-hunting, luxury-teaching Mr. Multi-Millionaire has a fortune which is estimated at thirty millions, but is ten millions more or less in the widest fluctuations of the stock market. His income is about a million and a half a year, but he usually spends three-quarters of a million, and relies upon speculation to put him in funds for extraordinary expenditures, such as a new house, a large gift to education or charity, a large purchase of pictures or jewels.

As human beings compare themselves only with those in better circumstances, he counts himself poor rather than rich—his fellow-citizens, the Oil King, and the Copper King, and the Sugar King, and the Steel King, and the Telegraph King, and the Tobacco King, and the Real Estate King are what he calls rich. He thinks himself unlucky rather than lucky; he avoids intimacy with men of smaller fortunes and no fortunes unless he has known them long, because he suspects that he is usually sought with a view to exploitation—and he is not far from right. He thinks he is opposed to ostentation, severely criticises his richer neighbors and loudly applauds frugality.