“Suddenly?  What is there sudden about it?  It isn’t a difficult question is it?  Or doubtful?  Just measure us on the only fair lines—­the lines of merit—­and of course you’ll admit that a journeyman chairmaker that earns his twenty dollars a week, and has had the good and genuine culture of contact with men, and care, and hardship, and failure, and success, and downs and ups and ups and downs, is just a trifle the superior of a young fellow like you, who doesn’t know how to do anything that’s valuable, can’t earn his living in any secure and steady way, hasn’t had any experience of life and its seriousness, hasn’t any culture but the artificial culture of books, which adorns but doesn’t really educate —­come! if I wouldn’t scorn an earldom, what the devil right have you to do it!”

Tracy dissembled his joy, though he wanted to thank the chair-maker for that last remark.  Presently a thought struck him, and he spoke up briskly and said: 

“But look here, I really can’t quite get the hang of your notions—­your, principles, if they are principles.  You are inconsistent.  You are opposed to aristocracies, yet you’d take an earldom if you could.  Am I to understand that you don’t blame an earl for being and remaining an earl?”

“I certainly don’t.”

“And you wouldn’t blame Tompkins, or yourself, or me, or anybody, for accepting an earldom if it was offered?”

“Indeed I wouldn’t.”

“Well, then, who would you blame?”

“The whole nation—­any bulk and mass of population anywhere, in any country, that will put up with the infamy, the outrage, the insult of a hereditary aristocracy which they can’t enter—­and on absolutely free and equal terms.”

“Come, aren’t you beclouding yourself with distinctions that are not differences?”

“Indeed I am not.  I am entirely clear-headed about this thing.  If I could extirpate an aristocratic system by declining its honors, then I should be a rascal to accept them.  And if enough of the mass would join me to make the extirpation possible, then I should be a rascal to do otherwise than help in the attempt.”

“I believe I understand—­yes, I think I get the idea.  You have no blame for the lucky few who naturally decline to vacate the pleasant nest they were born into, you only despise the all-powerful and stupid mass of the nation for allowing the nest to exist.”

“That’s it, that’s it!  You can get a simple thing through your head if you work at it long enough.”

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.  And I’ll give you some sound advice:  when you go back; if you find your nation up and ready to abolish that hoary affront, lend a hand; but if that isn’t the state of things and you get a chance at an earldom, don’t you be a fool—­you take it.”

Tracy responded with earnestness and enthusiasm: 

“As I live, I’ll do it!”

Barrow laughed.