e sufficient to say that gentle
blood is blood which has been ennobled by protracted contact with
accumulated wealth or unbroken prerogative. The women with these
antecedents is preferred in marriage, both for the sake of a resulting
alliance with her powerful relatives and because a superior worth is
felt to inhere in blood which has been associated with many goods and
great power. She will still be her husband's chattel, as she was her
father's chattel before her purchase, but she is at the same time of
her father's gentle blood; and hence there is a moral incongruity in her
occupying herself with the debasing employments of her fellow-servants.
However completely she may be subject to her master, and however
inferior to the male members of the social stratum in which her birth
has placed her, the principle that gentility is transmissible will act
to place her above the common slave; and so soon as this principle has
acquired a prescriptive authority it will act to invest her in some
measure with that prerogative of leisure which is the chief mark of
gentility. Furthered by this principle of transmissible gentility the
wife's exemption gains in scope, if the wealth of her owner permits it,
until it includes exemption from debasing menial service as well as from
handicraft. As the industrial development goes on and property becomes
massed in relatively fewer hands, the conventional standard of wealth of
the upper class rises. The same tendency to exemption from handicraft,
and in the course of time from menial domestic employments, will then
assert itself as regards the other wives, if such there are, and also as
regards other servants in immediate attendance upon the person of their
master. The exemption comes more tardily the remoter the relation in
which the servant stands to the person of the master.

If the pecuniary situation of the master permits it, the development of
a special class of personal or body servants is also furthered by the
very grave importance which comes to attach to this personal service.
The master's person, being the embodiment of worth and honour, is of
the most serious consequence. Both for his reputable standing in the
community and for his self-respect, it is a matter of moment that he
should have at his call efficient specialised servants, whose attendance
upon his person is not diverted from this their chief office by any
by-occupation. These specialised servants are useful more for show