"All persons in society, all cliques in society--or, rather, nearly all persons and cliques--ape their betters.

Now, who are the best betters?
The idlers, the wealthy idlers.
They do not know, as a rule, the things known by the persons who are doing something in the world.

To listen to conversation about such things would mean to be bored, wherefore the idlers decree that such things are shop and must not be talked about.

Likewise they decree the things that are not shop and which may be talked about, and those things are the latest operas, latest novels, cards, billiards, cocktails, automobiles, horse shows, trout fishing, tuna-fishing, big-game shooting, yacht sailing, and so forth--and mark you, these are the things the idlers know.

In all truth, they constitute the shop-talk of the idlers.
And the funniest part of it is that many of the clever people, and all the would-be clever people, allow the idlers so to impose upon them.