l patience with
my countrymen as I think over it! Surely we are not such a race of snobs
as not to recognize that a good barber is more to be respected than a
poor lawyer; that, as a French saying goes, _Il n'y a pas de sot metier_.
It is only the fool who is ashamed of his trade.

But enough of preaching. I had intended--when I took up my pen to-day--to
write on quite another form of this modern folly, this eternal struggle
upward into circles for which the struggler is fitted neither by his
birth nor his education; the above was to have been but a preface to the
matter I had in mind, viz., "social climbers," those scourges of modern
society, the people whom no rebuffs will discourage and no cold shoulder
chill, whose efforts have done so much to make our countrymen a byword
abroad.

As many philosophers teach that trouble only is positive, happiness being
merely relative; that in any case trouble is pretty equally distributed
among the different conditions of mankind; that, excepting the destitute
and physically afflicted, all God's creatures have a share of joy in
their lives, would it not be more logical, as well as more conducive to
the general good, if a little more were done to make the young contented
with their lot in life, instead of constantly suggesting to a race
already prone to be unsettled, that nothing short of the top is worthy of
an American citizen?

No. 26--The Climber

That form of misplaced ambition, which is the subject of the preceding
chapter, can only be regarded seriously when it occurs among simple and
sincere people, who, however derided, honestly believe that they are
doing their duty to themselves and their families when they move heaven
and earth to rise a few steps in the world. The moment we find ambition
taking a purely social form, it becomes ridiculous. The aim is so paltry
in comparison with the effort, and so out of proportion with the energy-
exerted to attain it, that one can only laugh and wonder! Unfortunately,
signs of this puerile spirit (peculiar to the last quarter of the
nineteenth century) can be seen on all hands and in almost every society.

That any man or woman should make it the unique aim and object of
existence to get into a certain "set," not from any hope of profit or
benefit, nor from the belief that it is composed of brilliant and amusing
people, but simply because it passes for being exclusive and difficult of
access, does at first seem incre