"How do you know, my dear, that any one does think himself our better?" demanded the husband.
"Why do they not all visit us then!"
"Why do you not visit everybody yourself? A pretty household we should have, if you did nothing but visit every one who lives even in this street!"
"You surely would not have me visiting the grocers' wives at the corners, and all the other rubbish of the neighbourhood. What I mean is that all the people of a certain sort ought to visit all the other people of a certain sort, in the same town."
"You surely will make an exception, at least on account of numbers. I saw number three thousand six hundred and fifty this very day on a cart, and if the wives of all these carmen should visit one another, each would have to make ten visits daily in order to get through with the list in a twelvemonth."
"I have always bad luck in making you comprehend these things, Mr. Jarvis."
"I am afraid, my dear, it is because you do not very clearly comprehend them yourself. You first say that everybody ought to visit everybody, and then you insist on it, you will visit none but those you think good enough to be visited by Mrs. Jared Jarvis."
"What I mean is, that no one in New-York has a right to think himself, or herself, better than ourselves."
"Better?--In what sense better?"
"In such a sense as to induce them to think themselves too good to visit us."