He appreciated the fine qualities of both, and realized that they would have an uncommonly good chance of hitting it off tranquilly together.

Of all their qualities of mutual adaptability the one that impressed him most deeply was the one at which he was always scoffing--what he called their breeding.

Theoretically, and so far as his personal practice went, he genuinely despised "breeding"; but he could not uproot a most worshipful reverence for it, a reverence of which he was ashamed.

He had no "breeding" himself; he was experiencing in Washington a phase of life which was entirely new to him, and it had developed in him the snobbish instincts that are the rankest weeds in the garden of civilization.
Their seeds fly everywhere, are sown broadcast, threaten the useful plants and the flowers incessantly, contrive to grow, to flourish even, in the desert places.

Craig had an instinct against this plague; but he was far too self-confident to suspect that it could enter his own gates and attack his own fields.