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Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume IV, Issue 600, 28 April 1891, Page 2

The letter of the Sydney Mail’s New York correspondent proves how money has become the god that Americans worship. “An aristocracy of intellect” is not favored in the leading States. The correspondennt writes :—“ Only a couple of days before these historic obsequies (Sherman’s) there took place in the city of Philadelphia a pageant of an altogether different kind, to which the newspapers gave up almost as much space, and over which the rhetoric of the wordpainting journalist was lavished with almost equal profusion. This was the wedding of one of the contemporary Astors—John Jacob. 1 Like a Royal Marriage ’ was the heading of several of these reports, and in sober earnest, many a king has been married at a mere percentage of the cost. Only 2000 guests were invited, but these included all she more notable representatives of the 1 very tich 1 in the cities of the Eastern States. Reading through the list, however, not a dozen names will be found of men who have achieved distinction in other than speculative or commercial pursuits. Men prominent in official life were conspicuously absent, and only a few lawyers and clergymen represented the learned classes. Money in its most naked and brutal form was not only honored with the chief place at the ceremony, but was honored to the exclusion of everything else. J Millions of readers are treated to exhaustive accounts of the splendour of the trousseau of the bride, and of the appointments of the wedding feast ; ana the -detailed lists of the presents show a real -value'.'of 2,0d0,000d0i-. Sketches of the

history of the family, several columns in length, were published in every great paper, and by common agreement it is estimated that in 25 years the two Astors, if they spend only i,000,000d01. a-year each, will be worth, merely from the natural growth of their present possessions, a total of 698,000,000 dollars.”