"Do you mean that
you permitted people to do things for you which you despised them for
doing, or that you accepted services from them which you would have
been unwilling to render them? You can't surely mean that, Mr. West?"

I was obliged to tell her that the fact was just as she had stated.
Dr. Leete, however, came to my relief.

"To understand why Edith is surprised," he said, "you must know that
nowadays it is an axiom of ethics that to accept a service from
another which we would be unwilling to return in kind, if need were,
is like borrowing with the intention of not repaying, while to enforce
such a service by taking advantage of the poverty or necessity of a
person would be an outrage like forcible robbery. It is the worst
thing about any system which divides men, or allows them to be
divided, into classes and castes, that it weakens the sense of a
common humanity. Unequal distribution of wealth, and, still more
effectually, unequal opportunities of education and culture, divided
society in your day into classes which in many respects regarded each
other as distinct races. There is not, after all, such a difference as
might appear between our ways of looking at this question of service.
Ladies and gentlemen of the cultured class in your day would no more
have permitted persons of their own class to render them services they
would scorn to return than we would permit anybody to do so. The poor
and the uncultured, however, they looked upon as of another kind from
themselves. The equal wealth and equal opportunities of culture which
all persons now enjoy have simply made us all members of one class,
which corresponds to the most fortunate class with you. Until this
equality of condition had come to pass, the idea of the solidarity of
humanity, the brother hood of all men, could never have become the
real conviction and practical principle of action it is nowadays. In
your day the same phrases were indeed used, but they were phrases
merely."

"Do the waiters, also, volunteer?"

"No," replied Dr. Leete. "The waiters are young men in the
unclassified grade of the industrial army who are assignable to all
sorts of miscellaneous occupations not requiring special skill.
Waiting on table is one of these, and every young recruit is given a
taste of it. I myself served as a waiter for several months in this
very dining-house some forty years ago. Once more you must remember
that there is recognized no sort of differen