rom me?"

"Well--no."

"Are you any better than me?"

"O,--er--why, certainly not."

"Are you as good? Come!"

"Indeed, I--the fact is you take me so suddenly--"

"Suddenly? What is there sudden about it? It isn't a difficult question
is it? Or doubtful? Just measure us on the only fair lines--the lines
of merit--and of course you'll admit that a journeyman chairmaker that
earns his twenty dollars a week, and has had the good and genuine culture
of contact with men, and care, and hardship, and failure, and success,
and downs and ups and ups and downs, is just a trifle the superior of a
young fellow like you, who doesn't know how to do anything that's
valuable, can't earn his living in any secure and steady way, hasn't had
any experience of life and its seriousness, hasn't any culture but the
artificial culture of books, which adorns but doesn't really educate
--come! if I wouldn't scorn an earldom, what the devil right have you
to do it!"

Tracy dissembled his joy, though he wanted to thank the chair-maker for
that last remark. Presently a thought struck him, and he spoke up
briskly and said:

"But look here, I really can't quite get the hang of your notions--your
principles, if they are principles. You are inconsistent. You are
opposed to aristocracies, yet you'd take an earldom if you could. Am I
to understand that you don't blame an earl for being and remaining an
earl?"

"I certainly don't."

"And you wouldn't blame Tompkins, or yourself, or me, or anybody, for
accepting an earldom if it was offered?"

"Indeed I wouldn't."

"Well, then, who would you blame?"

"The whole nation--any bulk and mass of population anywhere, in any
country, that will put up with the infamy, the outrage, the insult of a
hereditary aristocracy which they can't enter--and on absolutely free and
equal terms."

"Come, aren't you beclouding yourself with distinctions that are not
differences?"

"Indeed I am not. I am entirely clear-headed about this thing. If I
could extirpate an aristocratic system by declining its honors, then I
should be a rascal to accept them. And if enough of the mass would join
me to make the extirpation possible, then I should be a rascal to do
otherwise than help in the attempt."

"I believe I understand--yes, I think I get the idea. You have no blame
for the lucky few who naturally decline to vacate the pleasant nest they
were born into, you only despise the all-powerful and stupid