father were old pals:  they used to go poaching together; but the parent of Lord O. was so clever as to open a shop, where he sold what his friend poached.  The shop began it you see.  The way up is known to everybody.  But there is another way which we seldom regard; it is the way down again.  The Family Rise is the commonest phenomenon.  Is not the name Legion of those of whom men say, partly with the pride of connecting themselves with greatness, partly with the natural desire, which small men always show, to tear away something of that greatness, ’Why, I knew him when his father had a shop!’ The Family Fall is less conspicuous.  Yet there are always as many going down as climbing up.  You cannot, in fact, stay still.  You must either climb or slip down—­unless, indeed, you have got your leg over the topmost rung, which means the stability of an hereditary title and landed property.  We all ought to have hereditary titles and landed property, in order to insure national prosperity for ever.  Novelists do not, as a rule, treat of the Sinking Back because it is a depressing subject.  There are many ways of falling.  Mostly, the father makes an ass of himself in the way of business or speculation; or he dies too soon; or his sons possess none of their father’s ability; or they take to drink.  Anyhow, down goes the Family, at first slowly, but with ever increasing rapidity, back to its original level.  There is no country in the world—­certainly not the United States—­where a young man may rise to distinction with greater ease than this realm of the Three Kingdoms.  There is also none where the families show a greater alacrity in sinking.  But the most reluctant to go down, those who cling most tightly to the social level which they think they have reached, are the daughters; so that when misfortunes fall upon them they are ready to deny themselves everything rather than lose the social dignity which they think belongs to them.

Again, a steady feeder of these ranks is the large family of girls.  It is astonishing what a number of families there are in which they are all, or nearly all, girls.  The father is, perhaps, a professional man of some kind, whose blamelessness has not brought him solid success, so that there is always tightness.  And it is beautiful to remark the cheerfulness of the girls, and how they accept the tightness as a necessary part of the World’s Order; and how they welcome each new feminine arrival as if it was really going to add a solid lump of comfort to the family joy.  These girls face work from the beginning.  Well for them if they have any better training than the ordinary day-school, or any special teaching at all.