After opening the conversation with him, as you would an oyster, by the introduction of a pretty keen knife of inquisitorial questions, the chief speaker began to hold forth, capriciously enough, on the essentials and distinguishing attributes of a gentleman. He declared, emphatically, that one qualification alone was necessary, and that money only made a gentleman, according to the world, and, above all, in the United States (quite a mistake is this, I fully believe). "Let a man," said he, "be dressed here in every thing of the best, with splendid rings on his fingers, and plenty of money to spend at the ends of them, and he may go where he will, and be received as a gentleman; ay, though he may be a gambler, a rogue, or a swindler, and you, now, _you_ may be a good honest mechanic; but _he_ will at once get into the best society in these parts, which you would never dream even of attempting to accomplish--" "But he would not be a gentleman," broke in the Kentuckian, indignantly. "No, sir; nor will I ever allow that money only makes the gentleman: it is the principle, sir, and the inner feeling, and the mind--and no fine clothes can ever make it; and no rough ones unmake it, that's a fact. And, sir, there's many a better gentleman following the plow in these parts than there is among the richer classes: I mean those poor men who're contented with their lot, and work hard and try no mean shifts and methods to get on an' up in the world; for there's little some 'ill stick at to get at money; and such means a true gentleman (what _I_ call a gentleman) will avoid like poison, and scorn utterly." "Now, that's all very well for you to talk so here just now; but you know yourself, I don't doubt, that _your own_ object, as well as all the world's around you, is to make money. It is with that object that you work hard and save up: you do not work only to live, or make yourself more comfortable, but to get money: and money is the be-all and end-all of all and every body; and that only commands consideration and respect." "That _only_, sir, would never command _mine_, and--" "Why, how you talk now! if you meet a fine dressed-out gentleman in one of these stages, you look on him as one directly--you don't ask him did he _make_ or _take_ his money--what's that to you?--there he is, and it is not for you to busy or bother yourself to find out all the private particulars of his history; and if you find him, as I say, well dressed in superfine, and he acts the gentleman to you, he may be the greatest rogue in existence, but he will be treated by you like a gentleman--yes, even by you." "Yes, sir, that maybe while I know nothing of him--while, as you say, he acts the gentleman to me; but let me _once find out_ what he is, and I would never show him respect more--no! though he had all the gold of California."