--that there is as good an upper stratum to
society there as in England. These remarkable individuals can only be
explained as being what naturalists call a "sport"--mere freaks and
accidents. This idea exists in the English mind solely, I believe, from
the lack of titles in America; which is because the colonists were
inspired by Anglo-Saxon and not by Norman ideas. Had Englishmen been
accustomed for a generation or two to have relations, diplomatic and
commercial, not with Mr. Brown and Mr. Smith, but with Lord Savannah
and the Earl of Chicopee, the idea would never have taken root. And if
Englishmen knew the United States better, they would be astonished to
find how frequent these "sports" and accidents seem to be. And it must
be remembered that the country does at least produce excellent Duchesses
and Countesses in not inadequate numbers.

Because American society is not officially stratified like a medicine
glass and there is, ostensibly at least, no social hierarchy, Englishmen
would do well to disabuse themselves of the idea that therefore the
people consists entirely of the lower middle class, with a layer of
unassimilated foreign anarchists below and a few native and accidental
geniuses thrusting themselves above. Democracy, at least in the United
States, is not nearly so thorough a leveller as at a first glance it
appears. You will, it is true, often hear in America the statement that
it is "four generations from shirt-sleeves to shirt-sleeves," which is
to say that one man, from the farm or the workshop, builds up a fortune;
his son, being born in the days of little things and bred in the school
of thrift, holds it together; but his sons in turn, surrounded from
their childhood with wealth and luxury, have lost the old stern fibre
and they slip quickly back down the steep path which their grandfather
climbed with so much toil. But no less often will you hear the statement
that "blood will tell."

In a democracy the essential principle of which is that every man shall
have an equal chance of getting to the top, it is a matter of course
that that top stratum will be constantly changing. The idea of anything
in the nature of an hereditary privileged class is abhorrent to the
mind of every good American. If he had to have an official Aristocracy,
he would insist on a brand new one with each generation; or more likely
that it should be re-elected every four years. We are not now discussing
the advantages or disad