We all sat down,--grizzly Silas Foster, his rotund helpmate, and the
two bouncing handmaidens, included,--and looked at one another in a
friendly but rather awkward way. It was the first practical trial of
our theories of equal brotherhood and sisterhood; and we people of
superior cultivation and refinement (for as such, I presume, we
unhesitatingly reckoned ourselves) felt as if something were already
accomplished towards the millennium of love. The truth is, however,
that the laboring

oar was with our unpolished companions; it being far easier to
condescend than to accept of condescension. Neither did I refrain
from questioning, in secret, whether some of us--and Zenobia among
the rest--would so quietly have taken our places among these good
people, save for the cherished consciousness that it was not by
necessity but choice. Though we saw fit to drink our tea out of
earthen cups to-night, and in earthen company, it was at our own
option to use pictured porcelain and handle silver forks again
to-morrow. This same salvo, as to the power of regaining our former
position, contributed much, I fear, to the equanimity with which we
subsequently bore many of the hardships and humiliations of a life of
toil. If ever I have deserved (which has not often been the case,
and, I think, never), but if ever I did deserve to be soundly cuffed
by a fellow mortal, for secretly putting weight upon some imaginary
social advantage, it must have been while I was striving to prove
myself ostentatiously his equal and no more. It was while I sat
beside him on his cobbler's bench, or clinked my hoe against his own
in the cornfield, or broke the same crust of bread, my earth-grimed
hand to his, at our noontide lunch. The poor, proud man should look
at both sides of sympathy like this.