University of Virginia Library

1. 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.

What we mean by “aristocracy” is merely the
richer part of the community, that live in the
tallest houses, drive real carriages, (not “kerridges,”)
kid-glove their hands, and French-bonnet
their ladies' heads, give parties where the
persons who call them by the above title are not
invited, and have a provokingly easy way of

dressing, walking, talking, and nodding to people,
as if they felt entirely at home, and would
not be embarrassed in the least, if they met the
Governor, or even the President of the United
States, face to face. Some of these great folks
are really well-bred, some of them are only purse-proud
and assuming, — but they form a class,
and are named as above in the common speech.

It is in the nature of large fortunes to diminish
rapidly, when subdivided and distributed. A
million is the unit of wealth, now and here in
America. It splits into four handsome properties;
each of these into four good inheritances;
these, again, into scanty competences for four
ancient maidens, — with whom it is best the family
should die out, unless it can begin again as
its great-grandfather did. Now a million is a
kind of golden cheese, which represents in a compendious
form the summer's growth of a fat
meadow of craft or commerce; and as this kind
of meadow rarely bears more than one crop, it is
pretty certain that sons and grandsons will not
get another golden cheese out of it, whether they
milk the same cows or turn in new ones. In
other words, the millionocracy, considered in a
large way, is not at all an affair of persons and
families, but a perpetual fact of money with a
variable human element, which a philosopher
might leave out of consideration without falling
into serious error. Of course, this trivial and
fugitive fact of personal wealth does not create a

permanent class, unless some special means are
taken to arrest the process of disintegration in
the third generation. This is so rarely done, at
least successfully, that one need not live a very
long life to see most of the rich families he knew
in childhood more or less reduced, and the millions
shifted into the hands of the country-boys
who were sweeping stores and carrying parcels
when the now decayed gentry were driving their
chariots, eating their venison over silver chafing-dishes,
drinking Madeira chilled in embossed
coolers, wearing their hair in powder, and casing
their legs in top boots with silken tassels.

There is, however, in New England, an aristocracy,
if you choose to call it so, which has a
far greater character of permanence. It has
grown to be a caste, — not in any odious sense, —
but, by the repetition of the same influences, generation
after generation, it has acquired a distinct
organization and physiognomy, which not to
recognize is mere stupidity, and not to be willing
to describe would show a distrust of the good-nature
and intelligence of our readers, who like
to have us see all we can and tell all we see.

If you will look carefully at any class of students
in one of our colleges, you will have no
difficulty in selecting specimens of two different
aspects of youthful manhood. Of course I shall
choose extreme cases to illustrate the contrast between
them. In the first, the figure is perhaps
robust, but often otherwise, — inelegant, partly

from careless attitudes, partly from ill-dressing, —
the face is uncouth in feature, or at least common,
— the mouth coarse and unformed, — the
eye unsympathetic, even if bright, — the movements
of the face are clumsy, like those of the
limbs, — the voice is unmusical, — and the enunciation
as if the words were coarse castings, instead
of fine carvings. The youth of the other
aspect is commonly slender, — his face is smooth,
and apt to be pallid, — his features are regular
and of a certain delicacy, — his eye is bright and
quick, — his lips play over the thought he utters as
a pianist's fingers dance over their music, — and
his whole air, though it may be timid, and even
awkward, has nothing clownish. If you are a
teacher, you know what to expect from each of
these young men. With equal willingness, the
first will be slow at learning; the second will
take to his books as a pointer or a setter to his
field-work.

The first youth is the common country-boy,
whose race has been bred to bodily labor. Nature
has adapted the family organization to the
kind of life it has lived. The hands and feet by
constant use have got more than their share of
development, — the organs of thought and expression
less than their share. The finer instincts
are latent and must be developed. A youth of
this kind is raw material in its first stage of elaboration.
You must not expect too much of any
such. Many of them have force of will and

character, and become distinguished in practical
life; but very few of them ever become great
scholars. A scholar is, in a large proportion of
cases, the son of scholars or scholarly persons.

That is exactly what the other young man is.
He comes of the Brahmin caste of New England.
This is the harmless, inoffensive, untitled
aristocracy referred to, and which many readers
will at once acknowledge. There are races of
scholars among us, in which aptitude for learning,
and all these marks of it I have spoken
of, are congenital and hereditary. Their names
are always on some college catalogue or other.
They break out every generation or two in some
learned labor which calls them up after they
seem to have died out. At last some newer
name takes their place, it may be, — but you
inquire a little and you find it is the blood of
the Edwardses or the Chauncys or the Ellerys
or some of the old historic scholars, disguised
under the altered name of a female descendant.

There probably is not an experienced instructor
anywhere in our Northern States who will not
recognize at once the truth of this general distinction.
But the reader who has never been a
teacher will very probably object, that some of
our most illustrious public men have come direct
from the homespun-clad class of the people, —
and he may, perhaps, even find a noted scholar
or two whose parents were masters of the English
alphabet, but of no other.

It is not fair to pit a few chosen families
against the great multitude of those who are
continually working their way up into the intellectual
classes. The results which are habitually
reached by hereditary training are occasionally
brought about without it. There are natural
filters as well as artificial ones; and though the
great rivers are commonly more or less turbid,
if you will look long enough, you may find a
spring that sparkles as no water does which drips
through your apparatus of sands and sponges.
So there are families which refine themselves into
intellectual aptitude without having had much
opportunity for intellectual acquirements. A series
of felicitous crosses develops an improved
strain of blood, and reaches its maximum perfection
at last in the large uncombed youth who
goes to college and startles the hereditary class-leaders
by striding past them all. That is Nature's
republicanism; thank God for it, but do
not let it make you illogical. The race of the
hereditary scholar has exchanged a certain portion
of its animal vigor for its new instincts, and
it is hard to lead men without a good deal of animal
vigor. The scholar who comes by Nature's
special grace from an unworn stock of broad-chested
sires and deep-bosomed mothers must
always overmatch an equal intelligence with a
compromised and lowered vitality. A man's
breathing and digestive apparatus (one is tempted
to add muscular) are just as important to him

on the floor of the Senate as his thinking organs.
You broke down in your great speech, did you?
Yes, your grandfather had an attack of dyspepsia
in '82, after working too hard on his famous Election
Sermon. All this does not touch the main
fact: our scholars come chiefly from a privileged
order, just as our best fruits come from well-known
grafts, — though now and then a seedling
apple, like the Northern Spy, or a seedling pear,
like the Seckel, springs from a nameless ancestry
and grows to be the pride of all the gardens in
the land.

Let me introduce you to a young man who belongs
to the Brahmin caste of New England.