text:  But a profession where men make way through the whisperings of women and an inexhaustible variety of _sotto voce_ contrivances must needs have a tendency to create a subserviency of spirit and of manner which naturally directs itself into gentility-mongering: where realities such as medical experience reading and skill are remotely or not at all appreciable we must take up with appearances; and of all appearances the appearance of proximity to people of fashion is the most taking and seductive to people _not_ of fashion