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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Lady Baltimore by Owen Wister: me. I had transgressed her sound old American code of good manners, a
code slightly pompous no doubt, but one in which no familiarity was
allowed to breed contempt. To her good taste, there were things in the
world which had, apparently, to exist, but which one banished from
drawing-room discussion as one conceals from sight the kitchen and
outhouses; one dealt with them only when necessity compelled, and never
in small-talk; and here had I been, so to speak, small-talking them in
that glib, modern, irresponsible cadence with which our brazen age rings
and clatters like the beating of triangles and gongs. Not triangles and
gongs, but rather strings and flutes, had been the music to which Kings
Port society had attuned its measured voice.
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