But, after all, the tale must have proved readable as a story to account for the large number of editions which it has reached.

Some readers have been curious about the locality the writer was thought to have in view.  No particular place was intended.  Some of the characters may have been thought to have been drawn from life; but the personages mentioned are mostly composites, like Mr. Galton’s compound photographic likenesses, and are not calculated to provoke scandal or suits for libel.

O. W. H.

Beverly farms, mass., August 3, 1891.

ELSIE VENNER.

CHAPTER I.

The Brahmin caste of new England.

There is nothing in New England corresponding at all to the feudal aristocracies of the Old World.  Whether it be owing to the stock from which we were derived, or to the practical working of our institutions, or to the abrogation of the technical “law of honor,” which draws a sharp line between the personally responsible class of “gentlemen” and the unnamed multitude of those who are not expected to risk their lives for an abstraction,—­whatever be the cause, we have no such aristocracy here as that which grew up out of the military systems of the Middle Ages.

What we mean by “aristocracy” is merely the richer part of the community, that live in the tallest houses, drive real carriages, (not “kerridges,”) kidglove their hands, and French-bonnet their ladies’ heads, give parties where the persons who call them by the above title are not invited, and have a provokingly easy way of dressing, walking, talking, and nodding to people, as if they felt entirely at home, and would not be embarrassed in the least, if they met the Governor, or even the President of the United States, face to face.  Some of these great folks are really well-bred, some of them are only purse-proud and assuming,—­but they form a class, and are named as above in the common speech.

It is in the nature of large fortunes to diminish rapidly, when subdivided and distributed.  A million is the unit of wealth, now and here in America.  It splits into four handsome properties; each of these into four good inheritances; these, again, into scanty competences for four ancient maidens,—­with whom it is best the family should die out, unless it can begin again as its great-grandfather did.  Now a million is a kind of golden cheese, which represents in a compendious form the summer’s growth of a fat meadow of craft or commerce; and as this kind of meadow rarely bears more than one crop, it is pretty certain that sons and grandsons will not get another golden cheese out of it, whether they milk the same cows or turn in new ones.  In other words, the millionocracy, considered in a large way, is not at all an affair of persons and families, but a perpetual fact of money with a variable human element, which