Station is as strictly defined as in England, where the village grocer's
daughter at Valmond no longer could speak to a school friend, a little
general servant who came to fetch treacle at the shop, when Pappa Grocer
bought a piano! So you see, Mamma, it is in human nature, whether you are
English or American, if you haven't a sense of humour. I suppose you have
to be up where we are for it all to seem nonsense and not to matter; and,
who knows? If there were another grade beyond us we might be just the same,
too; but it is trash to talk of equality. Even a Socialist leader thinks
himself above the crowd--and is, too, though I should imagine that the
American middle and lower classes would assert they have no equal but
God--if they don't actually look down on Him.
How I am rambling on, and I wanted to tell you heaps of things! I shall
never get them all into this letter.
When we arrived at this palace it was, as I say, raining, but that did not
prevent the marble steps from being decorated with three footmen at equal
distances to usher us into the care of a cabinet minister-looking butler,
and then through a porphyry hall hung with priceless tapestry and some
shockingly glaring imitation Elizabethan oak chairs--to the library, where
our hostess awaited us in a magnificent decollete tea gown, and at least
forty thousand pounds' worth of pearls.
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