Now, you people over here are like the metal types that the printers
use. You've all got your letters on one end of you, and you know just
where you belong, and if you happen to be knocked into 'pi' and mixed
all up in a pile it is easy enough to pick you out and put you all in
your proper cases; but it's different with us. According to the
Constitution we're like a lot of carpet-tacks, one just the same as
another, though in fact we're not alike, and it would not be easy if we
got mixed up, say in a hayfield, to get ourselves all sorted out again
according to the breadth of our heads and the sharpness of our points,
so we don't like to do too much mixing, don't you see?" To which Mr.
Poplington said he didn't see, and then I explained to him that what
Jone meant was that though in our country we was all equally free, it
didn't do for us to be as freely equal as the people are sometimes over
here, to which Mr. Poplington said, "Really!" but he didn't seem to be
standing in the glaring sunlight of convincement. But the shade is
often pleasant to be in, and he wound up by saying, as he bid us
good-night, that he thought it would be a great deal better for us, if
we had classes at all, to have them marked out plain, and stamped so
that there could be no mistake; to which I said that if we did that the
most of the mistakes would come in the sorting, which, according to my
reading of books and newspapers, had happened to most countries that
keep up aristocracies.
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