Seventhly, they showed their underbreeding by their patriotism—a coarse note. Eighthly, their dress, household service, and furniture were bad, and, what was infinitely worse, "they did not know it." Really nice people to-day live and have their being in a consciousness of their furniture, their household service, and their dress. Ninthly, and lastly, and most confidentially, "you really would not want to spend a week in the house of any one of them."
This bill of indictment was clearly intended for the ears of a superior class or a coterie superior to the Emersonian circle. We aristocrats, suggests Mrs. Gerould, must make a stand for culture; we must get together and exclude both the dead and the living whose furniture does not come up to our standards and who have not mastered the subjunctive mood. Now, to take this line is going to hurt Mrs. Gerould's popularity with the great majority who have not heard of the subjunctive. It is going to have a very estranging effect upon the masses of Americans who still cling to fumed oak. This is of no consequence to her. She definitely and defiantly announces that she wishes to draw apart, that her faith and her fun depend upon the preservation of "caste and class and clan." But it is of consequence to a major democratic
