“Pshaw!” exclaimed Dunscomb, with a contemptuous curl of the lip—“not one in a thousand knows the meaning of the word; and he among the rest. The report you mention is that of a refined gentleman, to be sure, and is addressed to his equals. What exclusive political privilege does Mary Monson possess? or what does the patroon, unless it be the privilege of having more stolen from him, by political frauds, than any other man in the State? This cant about social aristocracy, even in a state of society in which the servant deserts his master with impunity, in the midst of a dinner, is very miserable stuff! Aristocracy, forsooth! If there be aristocracy in America, the blackguard is the aristocrat. Away, then, with all this trash, and speak common sense in future.”
“You amaze me, sir! Why, I regard you as a sort of aristocrat, Mr. Dunscomb.”
“Me!—And what do you see aristocratic about me, pray?”
“Why, sir, you don’t look like the rest of us. Your very walk is different—your language, manners, dress, habits and opinions, all differ from those of the Duke’s county bar. Now, to my notion, that is being exclusive and peculiar; and whatever is peculiar is aristocratic, is it not?”
Here Dunscomb and his nephew burst out in a laugh; and, for a few minutes, Mary Monson was forgotten. Timms was quite in earnest; for he had fallen into the every-day notions, in this respect, and it was not easy to get him out of them.
“Perhaps the Duke’s county bar contains the aristocrats, and I am the cerf!” said the counsellor.
“That cannot be—you must be the aristocrat, if any there be among us. I don’t know why it is so, but so it is; yes, you are the aristocrat, if there be one at our bar.”
Jack smiled, and looked funny; but he had the discretion to hold his tongue. He had heard that a Duke of Norfolk, the top of the English aristocracy, was so remarkable for his personal habits as actually to be offensive; a man who, according to Timms’s notions, would have been a long way down the social ladder; but who, nevertheless, was a top-peer, if not a top-sawyer. It was easy to see that Timms confounded a gentleman with an aristocrat; a confusion in ideas that is very common, and which is far from being unnatural, when it is remembered how few formerly acquired any of the graces of deportment who had not previously attained positive, exclusive, political rights. As for the Attorney-General and his report, Jack had sufficient sagacity to see it was a document that said one thing and meant another; professing deference for a people that it did not stop to compliment with the possession of either common honesty or good manners.
“I hope my aristocracy is not likely to affect the interests of my client.”
“No; there is little danger of that. It is the democracy of the Burtons which will do that. I learn from Johnson that they are coming out stronger and stronger; and I feel certain Williams is sure of their testimony. By the way, sir, I had a hint from him, as we left the court-house, that the five thousand dollars might yet take him from the field.”