Tracy’s noble theories and high purposes were beginning to feel pretty damp and clammy.  He wondered if by any possibility he had made a mistake in throwing his own prosperity to the winds and taking up the cross of other people’s unprosperity.  But he wouldn’t listen to that sort of thing; he cast it out of his mind and resolved to go ahead resolutely along the course he had mapped out for himself.

Extracts from his diary: 

Have now spent several days in this singular hive.  I don’t know quite what to make out of these people.  They have merits and virtues, but they have some other qualities, and some ways that are hard to get along with.  I can’t enjoy them.  The moment I appeared in a hat of the period, I noticed a change.  The respect which had been paid me before, passed suddenly away, and the people became friendly—­more than that—­they became familiar, and I’m not used to familiarity, and can’t take to it right off; I find that out.  These people’s familiarity amounts to impudence, sometimes.  I suppose it’s all right; no doubt I can get used to it, but it’s not a satisfactory process at all.  I have accomplished my dearest wish, I am a man among men, on an equal footing with Tom, Dick and Harry, and yet it isn’t just exactly what I thought it was going to 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.

CHAPTER XIII.

The days drifted by, and they grew ever more dreary.  For Barrow’s efforts to find work for Tracy were unavailing.  Always the first question asked was, “What Union do you belong to?”

Tracy was obliged to reply that he didn’t belong to any trade-union.