Shows how people talk, though.
And even now they'll probably say I'm making up to the British army.
But it's better than having a valet in the house. The plain people
would never stand my having a valet and I know it."
I thought this most remarkable, that his constituency should resent
his having proper house service. American politics were, then, more
debased than even we of England had dreamed.
"Good work!" he said again. "And say, take out your papers--become one
of us. Be a citizen. Nothing better than an American citizen on God's
green earth. Read the Declaration of Independence. Here----" From a
bookcase at his hand he reached me a volume. "Read and reflect, my
man! Become a citizen of a country where true worth has always its
chance and one may hope to climb to any heights whatsoever." Quite
like an advertisement he talked, but I read their so-called
Declaration, finding it snarky in the extreme and with no end of silly
rot about equality. In no way at all did it solve the problems by
which I had been so suddenly confronted.
Social lines in the town seemed to have been drawn by no rule
whatever. There were actually tradesmen who seemed to matter
enormously; on the other hand, there were those of undoubted
qualifications, like Mrs.
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