“Yes, I understood from our friend here,” said the Altrurian, nodding toward me, “that you had broken only with the political tradition of Europe in your Revolution; and he has explained to me that you do not hold all kinds of labor in equal esteem; but--” “What kind of labor did he say we did hold in esteem?” asked the banker. “Why, I understood him to say that if America meant anything at all it meant the honor of work, but that you distinguished and did not honor some kinds of work so much as others; for instance, domestic service, or personal attendance of any kind.” The banker laughed again. “Oh, he drew the line there, did he? Well, we all have to draw the line somewhere. Our friend is a novelist, and I will tell you in strict confidence that the line he has drawn is imaginary. We don’t honor any kind of work any more than any other people. If a fellow gets up, the papers make a great ado over his having been a woodchopper or a bobbin-boy, or something of that kind, but I doubt if the fellow himself likes it; he doesn’t if he’s got any sense. The rest of us feel that it’s _infra dig._, and hope nobody will find out that we ever worked with our hands for a living. I’ll go further,” said the banker, with the effect of whistling prudence down the wind, “and I will challenge any of you to gainsay me from his own experience or observation. How does esteem usually express itself? When we wish, to honor a man, what do we do?” “Ask him to dinner,” said the lawyer. “Exactly. We offer him some sort of social recognition. Well, as soon as a fellow gets up, if he gets up high enough, we offer him some sort of social recognition; in fact, all sorts; but upon condition that he has left off working with his hands for a living. We forgive all you please to his past on account of the present. But there isn’t a working-man, I venture to say, in any city or town, or even large village, in the whole length and breadth of the United States who has any social recognition, if he is still working at his trade. I don’t mean, merely, that he is excluded from rich and fashionable society, but from the society of the average educated and cultivated people. I’m not saying he is fit for it; but I don’t care how intelligent and agreeable he might be--and some of them are astonishingly intelligent, and so agreeable in their tone of mind and their original way of looking at things that I like nothing better than to talk with them--all of our invisible fences are up against him.” The minister said: “I wonder if that sort of exclusiveness is quite natural? Children seem to feel no sort of social difference among themselves.” “We can hardly go to children for a type of social order,” the professor suggested.