This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1883 edition. Excerpt: ... XVIII NEW AND OLD WORLD MANNERS That strenuous belief in social caste which finds practical expression in the family feeling, "Stand aside; I am better than you," is the dry-rot of British civilization. It isolates sets and individuals, poisons social happiness, misplaces and mismates people, and breeds classes of Ishmaelites, whose sympathies and fellowship are limited to their own restricted spheres. One might suppose that the chief sufferers would be inspired with a desire for a sounder social constitution. But the malign influence of snobbery intensifies as it descends in society's ordering. I knew an elderly person afflicted with the notion that at some remote period royal blood had found its way into her ancestral veins, a notion which, even if true, had not prevented her from depending on the charity of strangers--republicans too--for a home. Having occasion one evening to go out, the favorite servant of the mistress of the house, a highly respectable Italian woman, volunteered to be her escort, adding, as the crowd was great, " Perhaps you had better take my arm." The English lady par excellence, as she considered herself, not daring to be separated, in the haughtiest and most offensive manner daintily took hold of the upper part of her sleeve with two fingers, holding it as if she were touching carrion, a pantomime which amused even more than offended the goodnatured Italian. This manifestation was an apposite example of the base manners which mean ideas of caste generate. Unfortunately, they are not very uncommon in some shape or other, stinging to the spirit when not brutally violent to the body. Can we marvel, then, at the distaste in which many foreigners hold those Anglo-Saxons whose lives are passed in an unworthy bondage...

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