Chapter 6.

   We are not concerned with the very poor. They are unthinkable, and only to be approached but the statistician or the poet. This story deals with gentlefolk, or with those who are obliged to pretend that they are gentlefolk.

   The boy, Leonard Bast, stood at the extreme verge of gentility. He was not in the abyss, but he could see it, and at times people whom he knew had dropped in, and counted no more. He knew that he was poor, and would admit it: he would have died sooner than confess any inferiority to the rich. This may be splendid of him. But he was inferior to most rich people, there is not the least doubt of it. He was not as courteous, nor as lovable, nor as healthy as the rich people, there is no the least doubt of it.  His mind and his body had been alike underfed, because he was poor and because he was modern they were always craving better food. Had he lived some centuries ago, in the brightly coloured civilizations of the past, he would have had a definite status, his rank and his income would have corresponded. But in his days the angel of Democracy had arisen, in shadowing the classed with leathern wings, and proclaiming, “All men are equal-- all men, that is to say who possess the umbrellas” and so he was obliged to assert gentility, lest he slipped into the bass where nothing count, and the statements of Democracy are inaudible.

                                                                                                                E.M Forster, Howards End