In , the narrator's
family falls into the middle class. This is evidently a matter of some importance to his father,
who opposes the narrator's plan of going to sea on the basis that such a course must be either
above or below him.
He told me it was men of desperate
fortunes on one hand, or of aspiring, superior fortunes on the other, who went abroad upon
adventures, to rise by enterprise, and make themselves famous in undertakings of a nature out of
the common road; that these things were all either too far above me or too far below me; that
mine was the middle state...
The narrator's father tells
him that the middle class is the easiest and most enviable station to which one can belong,
since he is neither burdened with the hardships of the poor nor a prey to the pride and ambition
of the great. He also points out that both kings and paupers often lament their state and it is
to the middle class that both aspire. A middle class life, he tells his son, is not only the
most comfortable and enjoyable type of existence, but also the most conducive to virtue. He
concludes by insisting that "temperance, moderation, quietness, health, society, all
agreeable diversions, and all desirable pleasures, were the blessings attending the middle
station of life."
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