"
Bridge laughed.
"It IS odd," he said, "how our viewpoints change with
changed environment and the passing of the years. Time was,
Billy, when I'd have hated you as much as you would have
hated me. I don't know that I should have said hate, for that
is not exactly the word. It was more contempt that I felt for
men whom I considered as not belonging upon that intellectual
or social plane to which I considered I had been born.
"I thought of people who moved outside my limited sphere
as 'the great unwashed.' I pitied them, and I honestly believe
now that in the bottom of my heart I considered them of
different clay than I, and with souls, if they possessed such
things, about on a par with the souls of sheep and cows.
"I couldn't have seen the man in you, Billy, then, any more
than you could have seen the man in me. I have learned much
since then, though I still stick to a part of my original articles
of faith--I do believe that all men are not equal; and I know
that there are a great many more with whom I would not pal
than there are those with whom I would.
"Because one man speaks better English than another, or
has read more and remembers it, only makes him a better
man in that particular respect. I think none the less of you
because you can't quote Browning or Shakespeare--the thing
that counts is that you can appreciate, as I do, Service and
Kipling and Knibbs.
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