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At the Palace portal Agathemer had no difficulty in locating Murmex, even in the crowd which packed all approaches to that entrance. I spoke to the centurion on duty at the portal and to the head out-door usher, meaning to arrange that Murmex should be let in among the first when the commonality were admitted after the senators and knights had paid their duty to the Emperor.
There is not nearly so much difference in price, as difference in style. As a first-class passenger I was assisted in and out, and the door held open for me; as third or second-class one can get in or out as they please for all the officials care. There is a very wide difference in every respect between those above and those below the line which separates "gentry from commonality."
We got into our new manse about the middle of March; but it was rather damp, being new plastered, and it caused me to have a severe attack of the rheumatics in the fall of the year. I should not, in my notations, forget to mark a new luxury that got in among the commonality at this time.
Such a plot was never laid to get rid of Palus the jockey; it was aimed at ridding the nobility of an Emperor they fear and hate, however popular he may be with the commonality.
For the lower species the earth will be restored to the centre of the universe and man to pre-eminence on the earth. Oh, I envy the lot of the commonality in the Rational State! Working their eight hours a day, obeying their betters, convinced of their own grandeur and significance and immortality, they will be marvellously happy, happier than any race of men has ever been.
Teacher's Pet might be dowered with all the virtues, but we of the commonality would have none of them. We chose to scoff at an excellence that insulted us. The King in "Hamlet" remarked, "There lives within the very flame of love A kind of wick, or snuff, that will abate it; And nothing is at a like goodness still; For goodness, growing to a pleurisy, Dies in his own too-much."
His course at the seminary and college naturally developed this into a snobbish assumption that he was of finer clay than the commonality, and in some way selected by fortune for her finer displays and luxurious purposes.
There was, however, little sentimental melancholy in the realization; he held an upright pride, the inextinguishable accent of a black Penny. His disdain for the commonality of life still dictated his prejudices. He informed Rudolph again that the present opera was without song; and again Rudolph gravely echoed the faith that melody was the heart of music.
He was of the same opinion; and we both agreed it was a rank exuberance of liberty, that the commonality should be exposed to the risk of being inoculated with anarchy and confusion, from what he, in his learned manner, judiciously called the predilections of amateur pretension.
To be sure Mr Dribbles, who at that time kept the head inns, and was in the council, said, with a wink, that it might be found an inconvenience to sober folk that happened, on an occasion now and then, to be an hour later than usual among their friends, either at his house or any other, to be shown by the lamps to the profane populace as they were making the best of their way home; and Mr Dippings, the candlemaker, with less public spirit than might have been expected from one who made such a penny by the illuminations on news of victory, was of opinion that lamps would only encourage the commonality to keep late hours; and that the gentry were in no need of any thing of the sort, having their own handsome glass lanterns, with two candles in them, garnished and adorned with clippit paper; an equipage which he prophesied would soon wear out of fashion when lamps were once introduced, and the which prediction I have lived to see verified; for certainly, now-a-days, except when some elderly widow lady, or maiden gentlewoman, wanting the help and protection of man, happens to be out at her tea and supper, a tight and snod serving lassie, with a three-cornered glass lantern, is never seen on the causey.
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