upon in a family council without a dissentient voice. This was the
party, then, to which Mr. Bernard was going. The town had been full of it
for a week. "Everybody was asked." So everybody said that was invited.
But how in respect of those who were not asked? If it had been one of
the old mansion-houses that was giving a party, the boundary between the
favored and the slighted families would have been known pretty well
beforehand, and there would have been no great amount of grumbling. But
the Colonel, for all his title, had a forest of poor relations and a
brushwood swamp of shabby friends, for he had scrambled up to fortune,
and now the time was come when he must define his new social position.

This is always an awkward business in town or country. An exclusive
alliance between two powers is often the same thing as a declaration of
war against a third. Rockland was soon split into a triumphant minority,
invited to Mrs. Sprowle's party, and a great majority, uninvited, of
which the fraction just on the border line between recognized "gentility"
and the level of the ungloved masses was in an active state of excitement
and indignation.

"Who is she, I should like to know?" said Mrs. Saymore, the tailor's
wife. "There was plenty of folks in Rockland as good as ever Sally
Jordan was, if she had managed to pick up a merchant. Other folks could
have married merchants, if their families was n't as wealthy as them old
skinflints that willed her their money," etc., etc. Mrs. Saymore
expressed the feeling of many beside herself. She had, however, a
special right to be proud of the name she bore. Her husband was own
cousin to the Saymores of Freestone Avenue (who write the name Seymour,
and claim to be of the Duke of Somerset's family, showing a clear descent
from the Protector to Edward Seymour, (1630,)--then a jump that would
break a herald's neck to one Seth Saymore,(1783,)--from whom to the head