“Well, I'm afraid he feels it more and more. If I can judge from the occasional distance and hauteur with which he treats me, he is humiliated by it. Nothing makes a man so proud as humiliation, you know.”
“That's true!”
“There are a couple of pretty girls at the St. Albans, art-students, who have been painting Barker. So I learn from a reformed cow-boy of the plains who is with us as a law-student and is about with one of the young ladies a good deal. They're rather nice girls; quite nice, in fact; and there's no harm in the cow-boy, and a good deal of fun. But if Barker had conceived of being painted as a social inferior, and had been made to feel that he was merely a model; and if he had become at all aware that one of the girls was rather pretty—they both are—”
“I see!”
“I don't say it's so. But he seems low-spirited. Why don't you come round and cheer him up—get into his confidence—”
“Get into the centre of the earth!” cried Sewell. “I never saw such an inapproachable creature!”
Evans laughed. “He is rather remote. The genuine American youth is apt to be so, especially if he thinks you mean him a kindness. But there ought to be some way of convincing him that he need not feel any ignominy in his employment. After so many centuries of Christianity and generations of Democracy, it ought to be very simple to convince him that there is nothing disgraceful in showing people to their places at table.”
“It isn't,” said the minister soberly.
“No, it isn't,” said Evans. “I wonder,” he added thoughtfully, “why we despise certain occupations? We don't despise a man who hammers stone or saws boards; why should we despise a barber? Is the care of the human head intrinsically less honourable than the shaping of such rude material? Why do we still condemn the tailor who clothes us, and honour the painter who portrays us in the same clothes? Why do we despise waiters? I tried to make Barker believe that I respected all kinds of honest work. But I lied; I despised him for having waited on table. Why have all manner of domestics fallen under our scorn, and come to be stigmatised in a lump as servants?”
“Ah, I don't know,” said the minister. “There is something in personal attendance upon us that dishonours; but the reasons of it are very obscure; I couldn't give them. Perhaps it's because it's work that in a simpler state of things each of us would do for himself, and in this state is too proud to do.”