States. Some of our English writers on 'American Manners and Customs,'
and our most acute analysts of American character, say that the
Americans are great snobs, and are only too glad to claim the possession
of even the most distant aristocratic connection;" so I broached the
subject to Bainbridge.

"It interests me to convince you," he began, in reply, "that in the
United States there is scarcely a vestige of aristocratic feeling. In
fact as in theory, there is in this country but one class of people.
Such supposed barriers as wealth and political position are only
partitions of paper--relative nothings. I do not mention heredity,
because in the United States all attempts to establish a family line
result in the family rotting before it gets ripe. The only pretence to
hereditary pride which we have here, exists in two States; in one of
them some four or five hundred persons cannot forget that their
forefathers got to shore before somebody else; and in the other a few
families still dispute over the threadbare question of whose
great-great-grandmother cost the most pounds of tobacco. Now,
candidly--is this sufficient to justify a reproach from Europe that we
are striving to claim or to create an aristocracy?

"And then there is that other reproach--we're such outrageous
tuft-hunters. I shall not deny having seen an American run himself out
of breath to get a peep at a duke, but I never knew an American spend
money to see one, unless the American was too beastly rich to care for
money at all. And then, hereditary nobles do not wear well here. Let a
visiting duke be followed within a year by anything less than a king,
and the visitor will fail to excite anybody out of a walk. You must not
in England judge of this subject from the effect on our people of a
certain not remote visit; for the people of the United States have a