For Myself, I Do Not Like The Americans Of
The Lower Orders.
I am not comfortable among them.
They tread on
my corns and offend me. They make my daily life unpleasant. But I
do respect them. I acknowledge their intelligence and personal
dignity. I know that they are men and women worthy to be so
called; I see that they are living as human beings in possession of
reasoning faculties; and I perceive that they owe this to the
progress that education has made among them.
After all, what is wanted in this world? Is it not that men should
eat and drink, and read and write, and say their prayers? Does not
that include everything, providing that they eat and drink enough,
read and write without restraint, and say their prayers without
hypocrisy? When we talk of the advances of civilization, do we
mean anything but this, that men who now eat and drink badly shall
eat and drink well, and that those who cannot read and write now
shall learn to do so - the prayers following, as prayers will follow
upon such learning? Civilization does not consist in the eschewing
of garlic or the keeping clean of a man's finger-nails. It may
lead to such delicacies, and probably will do so. But the man who
thinks that civilization cannot exist without them imagines that
the church cannot stand without the spire. In the States of
America men do eat and drink, and do read and write.
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