ers simply
didn't think of competing; and since this sort of thing carries its own
penalty, the designation which they shared with so many distinguished
persons in history became a byword on the lips of envious persons
and small boys, by which they wished to express effeminacy and the
substantive of the "stuck-up." "D'ye take me fur a bank clurk?" was
a form of repudiation among corner loafers as forcible as it was
unjustifiable.

I seem to have embarked, by way of getting to the Milburns' party--there
is a party at the Milburns' and some of us are going--upon an analysis
of social principles in Elgin, an adventure of difficulty, as I have
once or twice hinted, but one from which I cannot well extricate myself
without at least leaving a clue or two more for the use of the curious.
No doubt these rules had their nucleus in the half-dozen families, among
whom we may count the shadowy Plummers, who took upon themselves for
Fox County, by the King's pleasure, the administration of justice, the
practice of medicine and of the law, and the performance of the charges
of the Church of England a long time ago. Such persons would bring their
lines of demarcation with them, and in their new milieu of backwoods
settlers and small traders would find no difficulty in drawing them
again. But it was a very long time ago. The little knot of gentry-folk
soon found the limitations of their new conditions; years went by in
decades, aggrandizing none of them. They took, perforce, to the ways
of the country, and soon nobody kept a groom but the Doctor, and nobody
dined late but the Judge. There came a time when the Sheriff's whist
club and the Archdeacon's port became a tradition to the oldest
inhabitant. Trade flourished, education improved, politics changed. Her
Majesty removed her troops--the Dominion wouldn't pay, a poor-spirited
business--and a bulwark went with the regiment. The original dignified
group broke, dissolved, scattered. Prosperous traders foreclosed them,
the spirit of the times defeated them, young Liberals succeeded them in
office. Their grandsons married the daughters of well-to-do persons who
came from the north of Ireland, the east of Scotland, and the Lord knows
where. It was a sorry tale of disintegration with a cheerful sequel of
rebuilding, leading to a little unavoidable confusion as the edifice
went up. Any process of blending implies confusion to begin with; we are
here at the making of a nation.

This large c