Two Things I Noticed At Once When I Sat Down To Meat.
First, that the
people seated at that inn table were of the middle-class of society,
and secondly, that I, though of their rank, was an impediment to their
enjoyment.
For to sleep in woods, to march some seventy miles, the
latter part in a dazzling sun, and to end by sliding down an earthy
steep into the road, stamps a man with all that this kind of people
least desire to have thrust upon them. And those who blame the
middle-class for their conventions in such matters, and who profess to
be above the care for cleanliness and clothes and social ritual which
marks the middle-class, are either anarchists by nature, or fools who
take what is but an effect of their wealth for a natural virtue.
I say it roundly; if it were not for the punctiliousness of the
middle-class in these matters all our civilization would go to pieces.
They are the conservators and the maintainers of the standard, the
moderators of Europe, the salt of society. For the kind of man who
boasts that he does not mind dirty clothes or roughing it, is either a
man who cares nothing for all that civilization has built up and who
rather hates it, or else (and this is much more common) he is a rich
man, or accustomed to live among the rich, and can afford to waste
energy and stuff because he feels in a vague way that more clothes can
always be bought, that at the end of his vagabondism he can get
excellent dinners, and that London and Paris are full of luxurious
baths and barber shops.
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