Both classes equally constructed their ideals with the
fear of pecuniary disrepute before their eyes.
Today a divergence in ideals is beginning to be apparent. The
portion of the leisure class that has been consistently exempt
from work and from pecuniary cares for a generation or more is
now large enough to form and sustain opinion in matters of taste.
Increased mobility of the members has also added to the facility
with which a "social confirmation" can be attained within the
class. Within this select class the exemption from thrift is a
matter so commonplace as to have lost much of its utility as a
basis of pecuniary decency. Therefore the latter-day upper-class
canons of taste do not so consistently insist on an unremitting
demonstration of expensiveness and a strict exclusion of the
appearance of thrift. So, a predilection for the rustic and the
"natural" in parks and grounds makes its appearance on these
higher social and intellectual levels. This predilection is in
large part an outcropping of the instinct of workmanship; and it
works out its results with varying degrees of consistency. It is
seldom altogether unaffected, and at times it shades off into
something not widely different from that make-believe of
rusticity which has been referred to above.
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