old Woodson Street crowd, I feel ashamed or embarrassed, and turn it off as a big joke. I laugh about Mr. Jannadeau and his dirty fingers and the way he picks his nose, and old Alec Ramsay and Ernest Pegram spitting tobacco while they talk, and then I wind up by appearing to be democratic and saying in a frank and open manner—’Well, I like them… I don’t care what anyone says’(when no one has said anything!),’I like them, and always have. If the truth is told, they’re just as good as anyone else!’—as if there is any doubt about it, and as if I should have to justify myself for being’democratic.’Why’democratic’? Why should I apologize or defend myself for liking people when no one has accused me?
"I’m pushing Hugh ahead now all the time; he’s tired and sick and worn out and exhausted—but I keep’pushing him ahead’without knowing what it is we’re pushing ahead toward, where it will all wind up. What is it all about? I’ve pushed him ahead from Woodson Street up here to Weaver Street: and now this neighbourhood has become old-fashioned—the swell society crowd is all moving out to Grovemont—opposite the golf-course; and now I’m pushing him to move out there, build upon the lot we own or buy a house. I’ve’pushed’him and myself until now he belongs to the Rotary Club and I belong to the Thursday Literary Club, the Orpheus Society, the Saturday Musical Guild, the Woman’s Club, the Discussion Group, and God knows what else—all these silly and foolish little clubs in which we have no interest—and yet it would kill us if we did not belong to them, we feel that they are a sign that we are’getting ahead.’Getting ahead to what?
"And it is the same with all of us: pretend, pretend, pretend—show-off, show-off, show-off—try to keep up with the neighbours and to go ahead of them—and never a word of truth; never a word of what we really feel, and understand and know. The one who shouts the loudest goes the farthest:—Mrs. Richard Jeter Ebbs sits up on top of the whole heap, she goes everywhere and makes speeches; people say’Mrs. Richard Jeter Ebbs said so-and-so’—and all because she shouts out everywhere that she is a lady and a member of an old family and the widow of Richard Jeter Ebbs. And no one in town ever met Richard Jeter Ebbs, they don’t know who he was, what he did, where he came from; neither do they know who Mrs. Richard Jeter Ebbs was, or where she came from, or who or what her family was.
“Why are we all so false, cowardly, cruel, and disloyal toward one another and toward ourselves? Why do we spend our days in doing useless things, in false pretence and triviality?
