I think it was more the vulgarity and insolence of those I saw decked in the regalia of wealth than anything else--than even my own poverty--that changed my views and turned me for a time from my easy indifference as to social conditions toward a recognition that those conditions are ridiculously antiquated, a bent I have never quite got over, though I was later drawn back to a more conservative point of view than, under the hatred of sham and the spur of want, I was driven to occupy for some time. They have no traditions and no ideals. They know no standard but wealth, and possess no ability to display it but through parade. They feel it necessary to prove their novel position by continual assertion. They think that wealth has exempted them from decency. They mistake civility for servility and rudeness for gentility. Their best effort is only a counterfeit, a poor imitation of what they imagine to be the manners of the upper class abroad whose indifferent manners they ape. "Misery loves company," and when I wanted comfort I left the section of splendor and display, of riotous extravagance and glittering wealth, and went to those poorer than myself; a practice I can commend from experience. When I got so desperate that I could not stand it any longer, and was afraid I might fall down dead or do myself violence, I used to turn my steps in another direction and walk through the poorer part of the city--not the worst part--where there was nothing but dirt and squalor and filth: that sickened me, and I had never had much sympathy with the class that lived there. They always appeared contented enough with their surroundings and rather to enjoy themselves in their own way. And not the successful workman's quarter. There was an assurance and assumption there that offended me. The assumption bred of sudden success, no matter in what class, is everywhere equally vulgar after its kind. It was the part of the city where the people were respectable, but where they could just hold on with all their struggling and striving, that I used to go into; the part where there were patches, not rags; and sometimes an effort to keep down the dirt, and where a bit of a plant in a little pot or a little cheap ornament in a window told of the spark of sentiment that could yet live amid the poverty and hardness about it. They always place them in the windows, partly, no doubt, to get the light, and partly, perhaps, to show passers-by that there is something within better than might be looked for next door. These people on their holidays always make toward the open country; they try to get away from their robuster, more successful brothers, and get back near to Nature--the old mother that cares nothing for success; and repays only according to the love her children bear her. Here I often walked as I grew more wretched.