In
Glasgow, he said, there were more drunken women than anywhere
else in the world, though there was no public-house drinking with
them as in London. This, so far as I got at it, formed his
outlook on life, but I dare say there was more of it.
XV
I was always regretting that I got at the people so little, and
that only chance hints of what they were thinking and feeling
reached me. Now and then, a native observer said something about
them which seemed luminous. "We are frightfully feudal," such an
observer said, "especially the poor." He did not think it a
fault, I believe, and only used his adverb intensifyingly, for he
was of a Tory mind. He meant the poor among the country people,
who have at last mastered that principle of the feudal system
which early enabled the great nobles to pay nothing for the
benefits they enjoyed from it. But my other friend, the plumber,
was not the least feudal, or not so feudal as many a lowly ward-
heeler in New York, who helps to make up the muster of some
captain of politics, under the lead of a common boss.
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