164 OBSERVATIONS OF A RANCHWOMAN 



tion (?) disposed of for ever so far as you 

 are concerned, at all events. 



So it goes on. You support and sustain 

 in the widest sense of which these words 

 admit a succession of Portly Ones, every 

 line of whose faces and forms bears loud 

 witness to coarse pleasures (within decent 

 limits, of course, one or two examples to 

 the contrary notwithstanding) beer and 

 cards, physical as opposed to intellectual 

 labour, dull intelligences, aims of the most 

 material and you know beyond perad ven- 

 ture of a doubt precisely how their pro- 

 genitors looked and acted before them. And 

 you feel a kind of pity for their impotent 

 and ungraceful struggles to beat down class 

 barriers, which exist in this country as they 

 do everywhere else, and which will continue 

 to exist so long as education, high aims, 

 common-sense, refinement nay, even hered- 

 ity count for anything. Oil and water 

 cannot mix until the constituent elements 

 of both undergo a change, and in spite of 

 the waving of banners and shouting of shib- 

 boleths, like will continue to seek like, and 

 class distinctions, on one plea or another, 



