I believe in aristocracy … — if that is the right word, and if a democrat may use it. Not an aristocracy of power, based upon rank and influence, but an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate and the plucky. Its members are to be found in allnations and classes, and all through the ages, and there is a secretunderstanding between them when they meet. They represent the truehumantradition, the one permanent victory of our queer race over cruelty and chaos. Thousands of them perish in obscurity, a few are greatnames. They are sensitive for others as well as for themselves, they are considerate without being fussy, their pluck is not swankiness but the power to endure, and they can take a joke.
