Life — March 25, 1915 — page 8: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

“LATESE * High Society The world could dispense with high society and never miss_ it.—Presi- dent Wilson, at Berea College. LESS you, Mr. President; would you have a garden without tulips? You said, as the papers quote you: High society*is for those who have stopped working and no longer have anything important to do. In the papers this morning it is recorded that February 23th there was a luncheon given at the Colony Club to Miss Louisa Lee Schuyler on her seventy-fifth birthday, to celebrate the completion of forty years continuous social service, and present to her the gold medal of the Institute of Social Science, awarded for distinguished service to humanity. Miss Schuyler was born into high society, and has lived in it all her days, but not because she found nothing to do. She told how, as a girl, at a house-party at her grandfather’s home, she was stirred by her grandfather’s description of the appalling conditions of the alms- houses and hospitals in New York, and began to visit them. Her visits were fruitful. Mr. Choate said at the lunch- con that to Miss Schuyler’s efforts COHEN WAS ONCE AN OBSTRUC- TION TO THE TRAFFIC— were due the inauguration of the system of State care of the insane apart from inmates of the almshouses, the sepa- ration of children from institutions for paupers, and the founding of the first nurses’ training-school in the country. The present writer, Mr. President, recalls being taken to a luncheon in fairly high society about four years ago. He was taken to be exhibited as a speci- men of the out-of-society variety of the human species. He met there a young woman of the liveliest and most amusing qualities, who had broken into high society and formed the habit of it. But she excused hersclf early because of an engagement to go and try to pinch some ff a money out of Andrew Carnegie for th / the benefit of a college for the / mountain people of West Virginia. lf There are all 4 kinds in high so- ciety, just as in so- cieties of lower altitude. There are the dull and the lively, the kind and the hard, the deep and the shallow, the acrid and the sweet. This inevitable var- iety in folks make "two's COMPANY, THREE'S A CROWD” it almost as risky to generalize about “high society” as about “the middle class”, “the lower classes” or “the working peo- ple", Let us not tag our fellow- creatures to match our idea of the social level in which they practice life. It is not democratic to do that. Our society, like the kingdom of heaven, is within us. High society is all right if only it is high. The trouble is that so much of it is low. Sidney, Raleigh, Falkland, Lafayette, George Washing ton and several others were high so- ciety. Perhaps Chesterfield was low. The best thing about high society is apt to be the reaction. To be of it and have that over is almost worth while. And, after all, if high society, having stopped work, gets to be really good at playing, that is something. It is not unimportant that the art of tak- ing pleasure should be kept alive in this world. Yours respectfully, BUT NOT SO TO-DAY Cuesterriep. comichooks.com