Friday's Observation

William Dean Howells (1837-1920) was a very popular writer during the last few decades of the nineteenth century-- an era often referred to as The Gilded Age. There's a reason for that label, and some of it is explained in this quote from Mr. Howells:

“Now I know that so long as we have social
inequality we shall have snobs; we shall have
men who bully and truckle, and women who
snub and crawl. I know that it is futile to,
spurn them, or lash them for trying to get
on in the world, and that the world is what
it must be from the selfish motives which
underlie our economic life.”