"I have been," he said, "at a college football game, where the gate
receipts were fifty thousand dollars, and half a million was said to
have changed hands in bets on the result. It is easy to waste money."
"It is a sin," she said, "that some should be made poor, that others
may have it to waste."
There was a touch of bitterness in her tone, the instinctive
resentment (the colonel thought) of the born aristocrat toward the
upstart who had pushed his way above those no longer strong enough to
resist. It did not occur to him that her feeling might rest upon any
personal ground. It was inevitable that, with the incubus of slavery
removed, society should readjust itself in due time upon a democratic
basis, and that poor white men, first, and black men next, should
reach a level representing the true measure of their talents and their
ambition. But it was perhaps equally inevitable that for a generation
or two those who had suffered most from the readjustment, should
chafe under its seeming injustice.
The colonel was himself a gentleman, and the descendant of a long line
of gentlemen. But he had lived too many years among those who judged
the tree by its fruit, to think that blood alone entitled him to any
special privileges. The consciousness of honourable ancestry might
make one clean of life, gentle of manner, and just in one's dealings.
In so far as it did this it was something to be cherished, but
scarcely to be boasted of, for democracy is impatient of any
excellence not born of personal effort, of any pride save that of
achievement.
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