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In this class of society, always, in all races, morals, and manners tend to excesses. They are not restrained by sane conventions and laws that regulate society; nor are they held in the leash of respectability or in the chains of religion or of honour, as are the sturdy men and women of the so-called middle class. Constantly they are in rebellion against these laws and these traditions. Ever they are prone to substitute license for liberty, to plunge into immorality, to draw upon the stage in its worst moods for their passions and their pleasures, and to practise in their lives the vices of the decadent nations.

In this stage of our social life of which I write, the manners, the morals, and the practices of this social class crept into even that small section of society which calls itself “the Upper Class.” The young men—and unhappily the young women—of the finest families in our great cities began to copy the vices and to imitate the manners of this other class, and to plunge into the same excesses that marked its manner of life.