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NO AMERICAN ARISTOCRACY

The Failure of the Astor Family Proves This Beyond Doubt.

Romantic Story of the Rise of This Great American Family and Its Fortune.

Old Fur-Trading John Jacob Would Blush for His Dude Descendants Today.

The wharves are rotting at Astoria. ONe steps cautiously on them. Moreover, one seems never to be able to escape from these wharves For the town is built above the tide land. In and out among the wooden piers and water surges, riffing and purling, and leaving a beautiful stain of green on the dank piles.

Up above the tide lands rises an abrupt hill, with homes on it, and a church -- and a grave yard. There are pines there, of course. Where along the Oregon coast can one escape from these melancholy sentinels? The Columbia, strong and splendid, at this point really an arm of the sea, with green islands and reflective waters, "flows by, and sings an ancient song.

No American can visit this place without feeling a peculiar interest in it. It is a part of the history of the development of the first colossal American fortune. America has been more celebrated because of its material success than for any other reason And among all successes, public or private, of the material sort, there has been nothing more remarkable than the accumulation of the Astor fortune. So it is but natural then when the average American visits Astoria, that he should sigh as he looks about the quaint little place, and moralizes on several things, including his own poverty.

But the person with an imaginative mind is apt to view it with interest for a reason somewhat different. What he enjoys contemplating is the astonishing qualities for what may be called world-conquering, which distinguished John Jacob Astor, brother of a butcher, himself a German provincial, driven by penury to America, and beginning life as a peddler, with a pack on his back.