besides, I can settle what you would do. Are you any different from 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 mass of the
nation for allowing the nest to exist.”
“That’s it, that’s it! You can get a simple thing through your head if
you work at it long enough.”
“Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it. And I’ll give you some sound advice: when you go
back; if you find your nation up and ready to abolish that hoary affront,
lend a hand; but if that isn’t the state of things and you get a chance
at an earldom, don’t you be a fool–you take it.”
Tracy responded with earnestness and enthusiasm:
“As I live, I’ll do it!”
Barrow laughed.
“I never saw such a fellow. I begin to think you’ve got a good deal of
imagination. With you, the idlest-fancy freezes into a reality at a
breath. Why, you looked, then, as if it wouldn’t astonish you if you did
tumble into an earldom.”
Tracy blushed. Barrow added: “Earldom! Oh, yes, take it, if it offers;
but meantime we’ll go on looking around, in a modest way, and if you get
a chance to superintend a sausage-stuffer at six or eight dollars a week,
you just trade off the earldom for a last year’s almanac and stick to the
sausage-stuffing,”
CHAPTER XV.
Tracy went to bed happy once more, at rest in his mind once more. He had
started out on a high emprise–that was to his credit, he argued; he had
fought the best fight he could, considering the odds against him–that
was to his credit; he had been defeated–certainly there was nothing
discreditable in that. Being defeated, he had a right to retire with the
honors of war and go back without prejudice to the position in the