"And I will first," I determined within myself, "inquire into the mooted
point concerning the existence of an aristocratic feeling in the United
States. Some of our English writers on 'American Manners and Customs,'
and our most acute analysts of American character, say that the
Americans are great snobs, and are only too glad to claim the possession
of even the most distant aristocratic connection;" so I broached the
subject to Bainbridge.
"It interests me to convince you," he began, in reply, "that in the
United States there is scarcely a vestige of aristocratic feeling. In
fact as in theory, there is in this country but one class of people.
Such supposed barriers as wealth and political position are only
partitions of paper--relative nothings. I do not mention heredity,
because in the United States all attempts to establish a family line
result in the family rotting before it gets ripe. The only pretence to
hereditary pride which we have here, exists in two States; in one of
them some four or five hundred persons cannot forget that their
forefathers got to shore before somebody else; and in the other a few
families still dispute over the threadbare question of whose
great-great-grandmother cost the most pounds of tobacco.
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