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| ON THE YACHT NAMOUNA - A painting by Jules
Stewart, exhibited in the United States section, and loaned by Mrs.
Henry P. Borie, of Philadelphia. The extraordinary increase of
wealth in English-speaking countries with its accompanying activity
in ocean commerce, has given rise, during the present century, and
particularly toward its close, to the sport, science and pastime of
yachting, perhaps the most costly diversion which peoples or nations
ever indulged. It is said that $50,000 a year, as the expense of
keeping a fine yacht, is now a common item in the personal accounts
of the millionaires; and in the race for social eminence and the
formation of exclusive coteries, certainly the yacht is an effective
measurement of both financial ability and docility and loyalty to the
conventions of fashion One of two things is probable, if we
consider the party of men and women who while away the summer hours
on this yacht Namouna. Either they did not earn the money which is
here being spent at the rate of a thousand dollars a week, or, if
they did earn it, there is a certain martyrdom in the ennui of
fashionably spending it. We cannot imagine Peter Girard, John Jacob
Astor, and Cornelius Vanderbilt, the Commodore, thus using the time
which made their lives so valuable to them. But the second or third
generation finds the method satisfactory. The elite of Great Britain
possess 3,000 of these yachts, and America over 1,200; there are a
half dozen annual publications which record their history. |
