Also, I cannot help remembering, that, on the whole, I have been more intensely bored with works of fiction,—­beginning with “Gil Blas,” and ending with—­on the whole, I won’t even mention it,—­than I ever was by the Latin Grammar or Rollin’s History.  Naturally, therefore, I should not wish to threaten my friends with the punishment I have endured from others.  But then, as I said before, if I write down the circumstances that have come to my knowledge, with some account of persons, opinions, and conversations, no one can accuse me of writing a novel,—­a thing which I never meant to do, under any circumstances.

——­After having carefully weighed my friends’ arguments and my own objections, I have come to the conclusion to do pretty much as I like about it.  Now the truth is, I have grown to be rather fonder of you, the Reader, than I have ever been willing to confess.  You are such a good, kind creature,—­it takes so little to please you,—­you laugh and cry so very obligingly at just the right time,—­you send me such charming notes, such dear little copies of verses,—­nay, (shall I venture to say it?) such prodigal tokens of kindness, some of you, that I——­in short, I love you very much, and cannot make up my mind to part with you.  Rather than do this, as I could not and would not write a romance, I have made up my mind to tell you something of some persons and events of which I have known enough,—­of some of them, I might say, too much.  Of course, you must trust wholly to my discretion and sense of propriety, in dealing with living personages, recent events, and subjects still in dispute.  Trusting that none of my friends will pay any attention to any idle rumors tending to fix the personages or localities of which I shall speak, and reminding my readers that the narrative will constitute only a part of what I have to say, inasmuch as there will be no small amount of reflections introduced, and perhaps of conversations reported, I begin this connected statement of facts with an essay on a social phenomenon not hitherto distinctly recognized.

CHAPTER I.

THE BRAHMIN CASTE OF NEW ENGLAND

There is nothing in New England corresponding at all to the feudal aristocracies of the Old World.  Whether it be owing to the stock from which we were derived, or to the practical working of our institutions, or to the abrogation of the technical “law of honor,” which draws a sharp line between the personally responsible class of “gentlemen” and the unnamed multitude of those who are not expected to risk their lives for an abstraction,—­whatever be the cause, we have no such aristocracy here as that which grew up out of the military systems of the Middle Ages.