ty.

Take the distinguished people along down. Each has his group of
homage-payers. In the navy, there are many groups; they start with the
Secretary and the Admiral, and go down to the quartermaster--and below;
for there will be groups among the sailors, and each of these groups
will have a tar who is distinguished for his battles, or his strength,
or his daring, or his profanity, and is admired and envied by his group.
The same with the army; the same with the literary and journalistic
craft; the publishing craft; the cod-fishery craft; Standard Oil; U. S.
Steel; the class A hotel--and the rest of the alphabet in that line; the
class A prize-fighter--and the rest of the alphabet in his line--clear
down to the lowest and obscurest six-boy gang of little gamins, with
its one boy that can thrash the rest, and to whom he is king of Samoa,
bottom of the royal race, but looked up to with a most ardent admiration
and envy.

There is something pathetic, and funny, and pretty, about this human
race's fondness for contact with power and distinction, and for the
reflected glory it gets out of it. The king, class A, is happy in the
state banquet and the military show which the emperor provides for him,
and he goes home and gathers the queen and the princelings around him in
the privacy of the spare room, and tells them all about it, and says:

"His Imperial Majesty put his hand upon my shoulder in the most friendly
way--just as friendly and familiar, oh, you can't imagine it!--and
everybody SEEING him do it; charming, perfectly charming!"

The king, class G, is happy in the cold collation and the police parade
provided for him by the king, class B, and goes home and tells the
family all about it, and says:

"And His Majesty took me into his own private cabinet for a smoke and a
chat, and there we sat just as sociable, and talking away and laughing
and chatting, just the same as if we had been born in the same bunk; and
all the servants in the anteroom could see us doing it! Oh, it was too
lovely for anything!"

The king, class Q, is happy in the modest entertainment furnished him by
the king, class M, and goes home and tells the household about it,
and is as grateful and joyful over it as were his predecessors in the
gaudier attentions that had fallen to their larger lot.

Emperors, kings, artisans, peasants, big people, little people--at the
bottom we are all alike and all the same; all just alike on the inside,
and when