ed two groups or classes--the dwellers in the Cottage
and the dwellers in the Stone Hotel. This was at first a matter of
choice, and carried no idea of rank or class distinction,

For a brief time there might have been found support for that ideally
inaccurate statement of our Constitution which holds that all men are
born free and equal, entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness. With all our might we belie this clause, though in the time
of Ellisville it might have had some footing. That day has long since
passed.

The men of the Cottage Hotel continued big, brown, bespurred and
behatted, yet it might have been observed that the tenantry of the
Stone Hotel became gradually less sunburned and more immaculate.
Mustaches swept not so sunburned, blonde and wide, but became in the
average darker and more trim. At the door of the dining-room there
were hat racks, and in time they held "hard hats." The stamping of the
social die had begun its work. Indeed, after a time there came to be
in the great dining-room of the Stone Hotel little groups bounded by
unseen but impassable lines. The bankers and the loan agents sat at
the head of the hall, and to them drifted naturally the ministers, ever
in search of pillars. Lawyers and doctors sat adjacent thereunto, and
merchants not far away. There was yet no shrug at the artisan, yet the
invisible hand gradually swept him apart. Across the great gulfs, on
whose shores sat the dining-room tables, men and women looked and
talked, but trod not as they came in to meat, each person knowing well
his place. The day of the commercial traveller was not yet, and for
these there was no special table, they being for the most part assigned
to the Red Belt; there being a certain portion of the hall where the
tablecloths were checkered red and white. It was not good to be in the
Red Belt.

Sam, the owner of the livery barn, had one table in the corner, where
he invariably sat. His mode of entering the dining-room varied not
with the passing of the years. Appearing at the door, he cast a
frightened look at the occupants who had preceded him, and in whose
faces he could imagine nothing but critical censure of his own person.
Becoming aware of his hat, he made a dive and hung it up. Then he trod
timidly through the door, with a certain side-draught in his step, yet
withal an acceleration of speed which presently brought him almost at a
run to his corner of refuge, where