perpetuated itself; but it seems quite true that it only creates itself,

and is perpetuated by the people whom it despises, and who can dissolve

it at any time by assuming its mere sign-names themselves."

"It's what I think. There isn't any power on earth that can prevent

England's thirty millions from electing themselves dukes and duchesses

to-morrow and calling themselves so. And within six months all the

former dukes and duchesses would have retired from the business.

I wish they'd try that. Royalty itself couldn't survive such a process.

A handful of frowners against thirty million laughers in a state of

irruption. Why, it's Herculaneum against Vesuvius; it would take another

eighteen centuries to find that Herculaneum after the cataclysm. What's

a Colonel in our South? He's a nobody; because they're all colonels down

there. No, Tracy" (shudder from Tracy) "nobody in England would call you

a gentleman and you wouldn't call yourself one; and I tell you it's a

state of things that makes a man put himself into most unbecoming

attitudes sometimes--the broad and general recognition and acceptance of

caste as caste does, I mean. Makes him do it unconsciously--being bred

in him, you see, and never thought over and reasoned out. You couldn't

conceive of the Matterhorn being flattered by the notice of one of your

comely little English hills, could you?"

Why, no."

Well, then, let a man in his right mind try to conceive of Darwin

feeling flattered by the notice of a princess. It's so grotesque that

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The American Claimant