ehensive discipline,
conformity to which is required of all who would be held blameless in
point of repute. And hence, on the other hand, this conspicuous leisure
of which decorum is a ramification grows gradually into a laborious
drill in deportment and an education in taste and discrimination as
to what articles of consumption are decorous and what are the decorous
methods of consuming them.

In this connection it is worthy of notice that the possibility of
producing pathological and other idiosyncrasies of person and manner by
shrewd mimicry and a systematic drill have been turned to account in
the deliberate production of a cultured class--often with a very happy
effect. In this way, by the process vulgarly known as snobbery, a
syncopated evolution of gentle birth and breeding is achieved in
the case of a goodly number of families and lines of descent. This
syncopated gentle birth gives results which, in point of serviceability
as a leisure-class factor in the population, are in no wise
substantially inferior to others who may have had a longer but less
arduous training in the pecuniary properties.

There are, moreover, measureable degrees of conformity to the latest
accredited code of the punctilios as regards decorous means and methods
of consumption. Differences between one person and another in the
degree of conformity to the ideal in these respects can be compared,
and persons may be graded and scheduled with some accuracy and effect
according to a progressive scale of manners and breeding. The award
of reputability in this regard is commonly made in good faith, on
the ground of conformity to accepted canons of taste in the matters
concerned, and without conscious regard to the pecuniary standing or the
degree of leisure practised by any given candidate for reputability; but
the canons of taste according to which the award is made are constantly
under the surveillance of the law of conspicuous leisure, and are indeed
constantly undergoing change and revision to bring them into closer
conformity with its requirements. So that while the proximate ground of
discrimination may be of another kind, still the pervading principle and
abiding test of good breeding is the requirement of a substantial and
patent waste of time. There may be some considerable range of variation
in detail within the scope of this principle, but they are variations of
form and expression, not of substance.

Much of the courtesy of everyday