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of our enemy, rather than upon the glittering generalities and evasions of our friends. As soon as the social variations are perceived we become conscious that caste rules in American life with an iron rod, tempered only by the fiery furnace of much wealth or rare intellectual ability. The lower we descend in what is called social life the more perceptible become its demarkations. In the working-classes, its sway is omnipotent. A marriage between a laundry maid and a washerwoman's son is contrary to all the rules of propriety, and ends in family feuds. The regular visitant at hotel cupboards who receives pie is farther removed from the tattered mendicant at backdoors than a member of the diplomatic corps from a native of Washington. In a certain well-known alley resided a shrewd brother and sister of twelve and fourteen, who assigned to each of the other dwellers his proper place in the social status of the by-way, imposing upon them