Of
course, you must trust wholly to my discretion and sense of propriety,
in dealing with living personages, recent events, and subjects still in
dispute. Trusting that none of my friends will pay any attention to any
idle rumors tending to fix the personages or localities of which I shall
speak, and reminding my readers that the narrative will constitute only
a part of what I have to say, inasmuch as there will be no small amount
of reflections introduced, and perhaps of conversations reported, I
begin this connected statement of facts with an essay on a social
phenomenon not hitherto distinctly recognized.
CHAPTER I.
THE BRAHMIN CASTE OF NEW ENGLAND
There is nothing in New England corresponding at all to the feudal
aristocracies of the Old World. Whether it be owing to the stock from
which we were derived, or to the practical working of our institutions,
or to the abrogation of the technical "law of honor," which draws a
sharp line between the personally responsible class of "gentlemen" and
the unnamed multitude of those who are not expected to risk their lives
for an abstraction,--whatever be the cause, we have no such aristocracy
here as that which grew up out of the military systems of the Middle
Ages.
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