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be. I--I miss home. Am obliged to say I am homesick. Another thing--
and this is a confession--a reluctant one, but I will make it: The thing
I miss most and most severely, is the respect, the deference, with which
I was treated all my life in England, and which seems to be somehow
necessary to me. I get along very well without the luxury and the wealth
and the sort of society I've been accustomed to, but I do miss the
respect and can't seem to get reconciled to the absence of it. There is
respect, there is deference here, but it doesn't fall to my share. It is
lavished on two men. One of them is a portly man of middle age who is a
retired plumber. Everybody is pleased to have that man's notice.
He's full of pomp and circumstance and self complacency and bad grammar,
and at table he is Sir Oracle and when he opens his mouth not any
dog in the kennel barks. The other person is a policeman at the
capitol-building. He represents the government. The deference paid to
these two men is not so very far short of that which is paid to an earl
in England, though the method of it differs. Not so much courtliness,
but the deference is all there.
Yes, and there is obsequiousness, too.
It does rather look as if in a republic where all are free and equal,
prosperity and position constitute rank.
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