To illustrate the extraordinary argumentativeness of the Scots there is a story of a Scotchman who lay dying in a London hospital. A woman visitor wanted to sing to him some hymns, but he told her that he had all his life fought against using hymn tunes in the service of God, but he was willing to argue the question with her as long as his senses remained. I say that when a man in the face of death is willing to stand for the truth as it has been taught to him, it is out of such stuff that heroes are made. (Text.)—John Watson.
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Argument, Ineffectual—See [Docility, Spiritual].
ARISTOCRACY, ABSURDITIES OF
It is common to find in American novels such expressions as “great families,” “best society,” “long descended,” and we also hear of the “exclusiveness” of the “fastidious” American aristocracy, who think as much of their positions as the haughtiest vieille noblesse in Europe. “A patrician crush” is, according to one writer, the synonym of what another calls “a tony gathering.” These crushes and gatherings have, however, little of the aristocratic element in their composition. They are, for the most part, but fashionable circles in which prevails “the milliner’s estimate of life.” It is into this society that the young lady makes her “dew-bew,” as debut is startlingly pronounced in America. In no other English-speaking community do the plebeians stickle so for the titles of “gentleman” and “lady.” I was told by an Irish-American laundress that “the lady what did the clear-starching got twelve dollars a week.” And I have heard of a cabman who asked, “Are you the man as wants a gentleman to drive him to the depot?” During an investigation concerning the Cambridge, Mass., workhouse, one of the witnesses spoke of the “ladies’ cell.” And a newspaper reporter writing of a funeral had occasion to say how “the corpse of the dead lady” looked. The plebeian who, by dint of hard work, has accumulated wealth, often aspires to patrician distinction. Tiffany, of New York, is said to have a pattern-book of crests, from which the embryo nobleman may choose an escutcheon emblematic either of his business or of some less worthy characteristic. A shirt-maker of Connecticut, having made a fortune by an improved cutting-machine, announced his intention of getting a coat of arms. An unappreciative commoner asked him if the design would be a shirt rampant. “No,” he gravely replied, “it will be a shirt pendant and washerwoman rampant.”—Harold Brydges, Cosmopolitan.
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ARISTOCRACY, INGRAINED
Tolstoy says:
Speaking of my past I condemn myself unreservedly, for all my faults and errors were the natural result of my aristocratic birth and training, which is the worst thing that can befall a man, as it stifles every human instinct. Turgenef wrote to me: “You have tried for many years to become a peasant in conduct as well as in ideas, but you nevertheless are the same aristocrat. You are good-hearted and have a charming personality, but I have observed that in all your practical dealings with the peasants you remain the patronizing master who likes to be esteemed for his benefactions and to be considered the bounteous patriarch,” in which he was very right.
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