The Leisure Classes
Anonymous
There was a little beggar maid
Who wed a king long, long ago;
Of course the taste that he displayed
Was criticised by folks who know
Just what formalities and things
Are due to beggar maids and kings.
But straight the monarch made reply:
"There is small difference, as I live,
Between our stations! She and I
Subsist on what the people give.
We do not toil with strength and skill,
And, pleasing Heaven, never will."
The Influence of Servants
(From "The Reign of Gilt")
By David Graham Phillips
(American novelist of radical sympathies, 1867-1911)
There is a woman in one of our big cities who is now a leader of fashion, very "classy" indeed, most glib on the subject of the "traditions of people of our station." Her father was an excellent peddler, her mother a farmer's daughter who could be induced to "help out" a neighbor in the rush of the harvest time. This typical American woman behaved very sensibly so long as her sensible father and mother were alive and
