Society's shoddy geometry gives a short-cut for "my lady's maid"
to become "my lady." She surely knows "how to dress." The lady who
entertains well, in some cases does so with long experience as
a successful professional cook.
Some who dropped into California with another woman's husband,
forget, while rolling in their carriages, that they ever had one
of their own. Children with no legal parents have not learned the
meaning of "filius nullius." From the bejewelled mass of vigorous,
keen upstarts, now enriched by stocks, the hardy children of the
great bonanzas, rises the chorus, "Let the past rest. We have passed
the gates of Gold."
To the "newer nobility of California," is given local golden patents.
They cover modest paternal names and many shady personal antecedents.
In a land without a past, the suddenly enriched speculators reign
in mart and parlor. They rule society and the Exchange. In a great
many cases, a judicious rearrangement of marriage proves that the
new-made millionnaires value their recently acquired "old wines"
and "ancient pictures," more than their aging wives. They bring
much warmth of social color into the local breezy atmosphere of
this animated Western picture, these new arrangements of Hymen.
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