es, "imagine the great tribe of Smith ... in which all the
subtle _nuances_ of social merit and demerit have been set and
hardened into positive regulations affecting the intermarriage of
families. The caste thus formed would trace its origin back to a
mythical eponymous ancestor, the first Smith, who converted the rough
stone hatchet into the bronze battle-axe and took his name from the
'smooth' weapons that he wrought for his tribe. Bound together by this
tie of common descent they would recognize as the cardinal doctrine of
their community the rule that a Smith must always marry a Smith, and
could by no possibility marry a Brown or a Jones. But, over and above
this general canon, two other modes or principles of grouping within
the caste would be conspicuous. First of all, the entire caste of
Smith would be split up into an indefinite number of in-marrying
clans, based upon all sorts of trivial distinctions. Brewing Smiths
and baking Smiths, hunting Smiths and shooting Smiths, temperance
Smiths and licensed victualler Smiths, Smiths with double-barrelled
names and hyphens, Smiths with double-barrelled names without hyphens,
Conservative Smiths and Radical Smiths, tinker Smiths, tailor Smiths,
Smiths of Mercia, Smiths of Wessex,--all these and all other
imaginable varieties of the tribe Smith would be, as it were,
crystallized by an inexorable law forbidding the members of any of
these groups to marry beyond the circle marked out by the clan
name.... Thus a Hyphen-Smith could only marry a Hyphen-Smith, and so
on. Secondly, and this is the point which I more especially wish to
bring out here, running through this endless series of clans we should
find another principle at work breaking up each clan into three or
four smaller groups which form a sort of ascending scale of social
distinction. Thus the clan of Hyphen-Smiths, which we take to be the
cream of the caste--the Smiths who have attained the crowning glory of
double names securely welded together by hyphens--would be again
divided into, let us say, Anglican, Dissenting, and Salvationist
Hyphen-Smiths, taking ordinary rank in that order. Now the rule of
these groups would be that a man of the Anglican could marry a woman
of any group, that a man of the Dissenting group could marry into his
own or the lowest group, while the Salvationist Smith could only marry
into his own group. A woman could, under no circumstance, marry down
into a group below her. Other things b