Page:Adams - Essays in Modernity.djvu/59

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
DEMOCRACY: A DIALOGUE
47

the memory of man. By degrees I obtained more and more information on the subject, and it ended at last in convincing me of a horrible view of you. I remember well the evening when I first received the unescapable proof of this. Daniel, I went up into my wretched little bedroom in the icy loneliness of that cruel winter's night, with the blizzard lashing the rickety, trembling house, and lay on my face and sobbed (for I could not cry) over all that dear, sweet past of ours, and then rose, with my teeth clenched, and a murderous hatred and scorn of you burning like white-hot iron within me. It was long and long before that passed, and something like the kindly human tolerance we ultimately owe to all who are made of this frail flesh of ours came to me, for you. You see I am just the same vehement, passionate "partisan" that I always was, save, perhaps, that now I have lost the steady self-control which my training as an aristocrat gave me, and this I sometimes regret a little; for though it was based on the hateful sense of superiority over others, still, in this duel to the death of the possessors and the dispossessed, it is an instrument of very great value. Yes, I have grown to loathe and hate and despise my order; but believe me that, if it is possible, I despise and hate and loathe even more the order below it—the Middle class, the Shopkeepers; and this is the one