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This extract apparently exists in two versions, that quoted by Rayner being the more extended one. The Memorial Edition presents the following shortened version, beginning with the second sentence:
"There were then aristocrats, half-breeds, pretenders, a solid independent yeomanry, looking askance at those above, yet not venturing to jostle them, and last and lowest, a seculum of beings called overseers..."
It will be noticed that the Memorial Edition also uses the term "seculum" instead of "feculum," as in Rayner. Feculum appears to be derived from the Latin faeculentus, which is the root for our term, "feculent," which means "foul with impurities; fecal."