We knew that we were considered Miss Brandon's representatives in
Deephaven society, and this was no slight responsibility, as she had
received much honor and respect. We heard again and again what a loss
she had been to the town, and we tried that summer to do nothing to
lessen the family reputation, and to give pleasure as well as take it,
though we were singularly persistent in our pursuit of a good time. I
grew much interested in what I heard of Miss Brandon, and it seems to me
that it is a great privilege to have an elderly person in one's
neighborhood, in town or country, who is proud, and conservative, and
who lives in stately fashion; who is intolerant of sham and of useless
novelties, and clings to the old ways of living and behaving as if it
were part of her religion. There is something immensely respectable
about the gentlewomen of the old school. They ignore all bustle and
flashiness, and the conceit of the younger people, who act as if at last
it had been time for them to appear and manage this world as it ought to
have been managed before. Their position in modern society is much like
that of the King's Chapel in its busy street in Boston. It perhaps might
not have been easy to approach Miss Brandon, but I am sure that if I had
visited in Deephaven during her lifetime I should have been very proud
if I had been asked to take tea at her house, and should have liked to
speak afterward of my acquaintance with her. It would have been
impossible not to pay her great deference; it is a pleasure to think
that she must have found this world a most polite world, and have had
the highest opinion of its good manners. _Noblesse oblige_: that is
true in more ways than one!

I cannot help wondering if those of us who will be left by and by to
represent our own generation will seem to have such superior elegance of
behavior; if we shall receive so much respect and be so much valued. It