At Cambridge the best society was better, it seems to me, than even that
of the neighboring capital. It would be rather hard to prove this, and I
must ask the reader to take my word for it, if he wishes to believe it.
The great interests in that pleasant world, which I think does not
present itself to my memory in a false iridiscence, were the intellectual
interests, and all other interests were lost in these to such as did not
seek them too insistently.

People held themselves high; they held themselves personally aloof from
people not duly assayed; their civilization was still Puritan though
their belief had long ceased to be so. They had weights and measure,
stamped in an earlier time, a time surer of itself than ours, by which
they rated the merit of all comers, and rejected such as did not bear the
test. These standards were their own, and they were satisfied with them;
most Americans have no standards of their own, but these are not
satisfied even with other people's, and so our society is in a state of
tolerant and tremulous misgiving.

Family counted in Cambridge, without doubt, as it counts in New England
everywhere, but family alone did not mean position, and the want of
family did not mean the want of it. Money still less than family
commanded; one could be openly poor in Cambridge without open shame, or
shame at all, for no one was very rich there, and no one was proud of his
riches.

I do not wonder that Turguenieff thought the conditions ideal, as Boyesen
portrayed them to him; and I look back at my own life there with wonder
at my good fortune. I was sensible, and I still am sensible this had its
alloys. I was young and unknown and was making my way, and I had to
suffer some of the penalties of these disadvantages; but I do not believe