So I applied to a friend's coachman, a
hard-working Englishman, who was delighted to get the place for his
nephew - an American-born boy - the child of a sister, in great
need. As the boy's clothes were hardly presentable, a simple
livery was made for him; from that moment he pined, and finally
announced he was going to leave. In answer to my surprised
inquiries, I discovered that a friend of his from the same
tenement-house in which he had lived in New York had appeared in
the village, and sooner than be seen in livery by his play-fellow
he preferred abandoning his good place, the chance of being of aid
to his mother, and learning an honorable way to earn his living.
Remonstrances were in vain; to the wrath of his uncle, he departed.
The boy had, at his school, heard so much about everybody being
born equal and every American being a gentleman by right of
inheritance, that he had taken himself seriously, and despised a
position his uncle was proud to hold, preferring elegant leisure in
his native tenement-house to the humiliation of a livery.
When at college I had rooms in a neat cottage owned by an American
family. The father was a butcher, as were his sons. The only
daughter was exceedingly pretty. The hard-worked mother conceived
high hopes for this favorite child. She was sent to a boarding-
school, from which she returned entirely unsettled for life, having
learned little except to be ashamed of her parents and to play on
the piano.
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