Samuel Smiles：Thrift, Excerpt 494

This false and demoralizing habit arises from the overweening estimate which is formed of two things, well enough in their place,--rank and wealth. Everybody struggles to rise into some superior class. The spirit of caste is found as keenly at work among the humblest as among the highest ranks. At Birmingham, there was a club of workmen with tails to their coats, and another without tails: the one looked down upon the other. Cobbett, so felicitous in his nicknames, called his political opponent, Mr. Sadler, "a linendraper." But the linendraper also has plenty of people beneath him. The linendraper looks down on the huckster, the huckster on the mechanic, and the mechanic on the day labourer. The flunkey who exhibits his calves behind a baron, holds his head considerably higher than the flunkey who serves a brewer.

Source： https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14418
Locator：Excerpt 494 · Verified：2026-10-19 · Verification：Short excerpt

公版作品；原文逐字取自 Project Gutenberg，仅摘录段落并附全书链接。

This text is in the public domain. The edition and source link are above. Copyright

← Back to the library