Page:My Dear Cornelia (1924).pdf/89

 "You have a very irritating way," said Cornelia, "of trying to make the most sensible and obvious positions absurd to maintain. But you know I am right. You know that there is nothing absurd in being conscious of the claims of the Church and the State and the established system of morals and manners. You know there is nothing absurd in being conscious of the significance of money in enabling one to take and maintain a position of dignity and influence. A man has no dignity nor influence until he enters relations with the instituted and continuing forms of society. And though silly little girls may think they could spend a happy lifetime 'traipsing' after a gipsy minstrel, a wife knows better. Every married woman knows that a husband without dignity or influence is a perpetual humiliation."

"Very possibly," I said; "but you were going to define a gentleman."

"Why, a gentleman," said Cornelia, "is a man so well bred and so intelligent that he knows what I have just been saying, without being told; consequently he doesn't ask a nice girl to marry him if he is aware that he can offer her nothing but perpetual humiliation. A gentleman is a man whose character has been formed by the standards of