 a
three-day stretch.
    We were off before sunrise, Sandy riding and I limping along behind. In half
an hour we came upon a group of ragged poor creatures who had assembled to mend
the thing which was regarded as a road. They were as humble as animals to me;
and when I proposed to breakfast with them, they were so flattered, so
overwhelmed by this extraordinary condescension of mine that at first they were
not able to believe that I was in earnest. My lady put up her scornful lip and
withdrew to one side; she said in their hearing that she would as soon think of
eating with the other cattle - a remark which embarrassed these poor devils
merely because it referred to them, and not because it insulted or offended
them, for it didn't. And yet they were not slaves, not chattels. By a sarcasm of
law and phrase, they were freemen. Seven-tenths of the free population of the
country were of just their class and degree: small independent farmers,
artisans, etc.; which is to say, they were the nation, the actual Nation; they
were about all of it that was useful, or worth saving, or really respect-worthy;
and to subtract them would have been to subtract the Nation and leave behind
some dregs, some refuse, in the shape of a king, nobility, and gentry, idle,
unproductive, acquainted mainly with the arts of wasting and destroying, and of
no sort of use or value in any rationally constructed world. And yet, by
ingenious contrivance this gilded minority, instead of being in the tail of the
procession where it belonged, was marching, head up and banners flying, at the
other end of it; had elected itself to be the Nation, and these innumerable
clams had permitted it so long that they had come at last to accept it as a
truth; and not only that, but to believe it right and as it should be. The
priests had told their fathers and themselves that this ironical state of things
was ordained of God; and so, not reflecting upon how unlike God it would be to
amuse himself with sarcasms, and especially such poor transparent ones as this,
they had dropped the matter there and become respectfully quiet.
    The talk of these meek people had a strange enough sound in a formerly
American ear. They were freemen, but they could not leave the estates of their
lord or their bishop without his permission; they could not prepare their own
bread, but must have their corn ground and their bread baked at his mill and his
bakery
