62 Fellow-feeling as 



nia, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, or Tennessee. What 

 does matter is that these splendid soldiers are all 

 Americans ; that they are our heroes ; that our blood 

 runs in their veins ; that the flag under which we live 

 is the flag for which they have fought, for which 

 some of them have died. 



Danger from religious antipathy is dead, and 

 from sectional antipathy dying; but there are at 

 times very ugly manifestations of antipathy between 

 class and class. It seems a pity to have to use the 

 word "class," because there are really no classes in 

 our American life in the sense in which the word 

 "class" is used in Europe. Our social and political 

 systems do not admit of them in theory, and in prac 

 tice they exist only in a very fluid state. In most 

 European countries classes are separated by rigid 

 boundaries, ,which can be crossed but rarely, and 

 with the utmost difficulty and peril. Here the boun 

 daries can not properly be said to exist, and are cer 

 tainly so fluctuating and evasive, so indistinctly 

 marked, that they can not be appreciated when seen 

 near by. Any American family which lasts a few 

 generations will be apt to have representatives in 

 all the different classes. -The great business men, 

 even the great professional men, and especially the 

 great statesmen and sailors and soldiers, are very 

 apt to spring from among the farmers or wage- 

 workers, and their kinsfolk remain near the old 



