about him are made by
seeing one side of him and being blind to the other.

Such a thing as a secure position is practically unknown among us. There
is no American who cannot hope to lift himself another notch or two, if
he is good; there is absolutely no hard and fast impediment to his
progress. But neither is there any American who doesn't have to keep on
fighting for whatever position he has; no wall of caste is there to
protect him if he slips. One observes every day the movement of
individuals, families, whole groups, in both directions. All of our
cities are full of brummagem aristocrats--aristocrats, at all events, in
the view of their neighbours--whose grandfathers, or even fathers, were
day labourers; and working for them, supported by them, heavily
patronized by them, are clerks whose grandfathers were lords of the
soil. The older societies of Europe, as every one knows, protect their
caste lines a great deal more resolutely. It is as impossible for a
wealthy pork packer or company promoter to enter the _noblesse_ of
Austria, even today, as it would be for him to enter the boudoir of a
queen; he is barred out absolutely and even his grandchildren are under
the ban. And in precisely the same way it is as impossible for a count
of the old Holy Roman Empire to lose caste as it would be for the Dalai
Lama; he may sink to unutterable depths within his order, but he cannot
get himself out of it, nor can he lose the peculiar advantages that go
with membership; he is still a _Graf_, and, as such, above the herd.
Once, in a Madrid cafe, the two of us encountered a Spanish marquis who
wore celluloid cuffs, suffered from pediculosis and had been drunk for
sixteen years. Yet he remained a marquis in good standing, and all
lesser Spaniards, including Socialists, envied him and deferred to him;
none would have dreamed of slapping him on the back. Knowing that he was
quite as safe within his ancient order as a dog among the _canidae_, he
gave no thought to appearances. But in the same way he knew that he had
reached his limit--that no conceivable effort could lift him higher. He
was a grandee of Spain and that was all; above glimmered royalty and
the hierarchy of the saints, and both royalty and the hierarchy of the
saints were as much beyond him as grandeeism was beyond the polite and
well-educated head-waiter who laved him with ice-water, when he had
_mania-a-potu_.

No American is ever so securely lodged. There is alway