"Opinion's but a fool that makes us scan, The outward habit by the inward man." Respectable is a word that has been wrested from its true meaning of worthy of respect, and applied to the most sordid characteristics and conditions of human life. Respectability, like vulgarity and prudery, is an Anglo-Saxon attribute appertinent chiefly to the huge middle-class part of society. It is not the fetish of "the upper ten thousand," nor do the majority of the working class bow down before it. Respectability stands for gentility, and the genteel folk are not often of the orders aristocratic and proletarian, but of the bourgeoisie. To call a decent, intelligent man respectable is to dub him gente…
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