"Well, what is the use of being in Society if you couldn't rub it in on people who ain't?" Abe asked.
"But this is a democracy, Abe," Morris said, "so who cares if he is in Society or not?"
"Don't fool yourself, Mawruss," Abe said. "There wouldn't be no object for Society ladies to advertise that they are in Society if they didn't know that reading such an advertisement would make a whole lot of people feel sore which wants to get into Society, but couldn't."
"And such people calls themselves Americans?" Morris said.
"They not only calls themselves Americans, but they _are_ Americans," Abe said. "Which the main talking points of any one who advertises that they are in Society, whether they do it through publicity in the newspapers, by marrying or dying, y'understand, is that the bride or the deceased, as the case may be, was a descendant of Txvee van Rensselaer Ten Eyck who came in America in sixteen fifty-three and that another great-great-grandfather opened the first ready-to-wear-clothing factory on the American continent in sixteen sixty-six."
"Of course, Abe, you may be right," Morris said, "but it seems to me I read it somewheres how a whole lot of people which is now in Society qualified by settling in Pittsburg along about the time Judge Gary first met Andrew Carnegie."
"Sure, I know," Abe said. "But millionaires can get into Society on a cash basis, _nunc pro tunc_, as of May first, sixteen twenty, as the lawyers say, Mawruss, which if a lady is trying to butt into Society on the grounds that her great-great-grandfather, Hyman de Peyster van Rensselaer, _olav hasholom_, came over on the _Mayflower_ and bought all the land on which the town of Hockbridge, Mass., now stands from the Indians in sixteen sixty-six for two hundred dollars, y'understand, it wouldn't do her chances a bit of harm if her husband came over on the White Star Line, third class, just so long as he bought U.S. Steel when it was down to thirty and a quarter in nineteen five and held on to it till it touched one hundred and twenty, y'understand."
"Then what used to was the 'four hundred' must have added a whole lot of ciphers to it in the last few years, Abe," Morris commented.
"Ciphers is right," Abe said. "But that four-hundred figure is a thing of the past along with the population of Detroit before the invention of the automobile, Mawruss, and I guess, nowadays, Society must be running the Knights of Pythias and the Royal Arcanum pretty close on the size of its membership, Mawruss."