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He was uneducated, but he possessed that exact knowledge of mankind that makes leaders; and his shrewdness was the result of caution and suspicion. But like all men of his breed, he hated with peculiar venom the well-born; he loved to grapple with them, to wrest their idleness from them, to compel them to work for a living, to humiliate them.
The high and well-born lieutenant spat comprehensively into the darkness overside. After a moment of hesitation he moved nearer and spoke in confidential accents. And the fragrant air of the night was tainted with the vinous effluvium of his breath. "Always he prattles of his precious duty!" the Prussian muttered. "Damn his duty!
With some justice the witty writer has been charged with snobbish vulgarity because he ridiculed humble Bloomsbury for being humble. His best defence is found in the fact that his extravagant scorn was not directed at helpless and altogether obscure persons so much as at an educated and well-born class who laughed at his caricatures, and gave dinners at which he was proud to be present.
Thomas Jefferson was an exponent of the democracy of his day, and with him democracy came into the National Administration. The "well-born" were discomfited. Yet it was not the democracy of Andrew Jackson's time. It was a democracy reflected from Europe like everything else in America at the time. It was the democracy of Montesquieu and the encyclopaedists.
But that won't figure a farthing's worth when he comes up to the hearthfire of God's family. And I think he understands this full well. I'm expecting to see him there; not as King of England, but as a brother. It is not a matter of blood. It's a blessed thing to be well-born. It makes a tremendous difference to have the blood of an old noble family in one's veins, if it is good clean blood.
For the rich and the well-born it was rather an imported fashion, an attractive drapery laid over the surface of minds that were conventional down to the ground, the modish mental recreation of men who lived by custom and guided their steps in the well-worn paths of precedent.
"Why not?" he asked. "I said I was going and I mean to go; indeed, I signed a document to that effect." "I daresay," I answered, "but circumstances alter cases. If I might say so, an adventure that perhaps was good enough for a young and well-born man of spirit and enterprise without any particular resources, is no longer good enough for one who has the ball at his feet.
Both those heroes were well-born and both were mighty car-warriors. They were seen to fight with each other, each highly enraged with the other. Similarly Kritavarma, O king, fighting with the grandson of Sini, that scorcher of foes, looked resplendent, like Shakra battling with the Asura Vala.
I was proud of this circumstance, and therefore it was no torment to me to hear the continual hints which my well-born master threw out upon this subject. I moreover never pretended to any knowledge which I had not; so that, by degrees, notwithstanding his prejudices, he began to feel that I had neither the presumption of an upstart, nor of a self-taught genius.
The king was willing, but the Board, who were all well-born folk, implored the king to spare them the indignity of examining the weaver's son. I knew they didn't know enough to examine him anyway, so I joined my prayers to theirs and the king turned the duty over to my professors. I had had a blackboard prepared, and it was put up now, and the circus began.
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