But there will also be advantages in this book for those who, while they can hardly pretend to be rich,are yet very unwilling to confess themselves poor. Next to being rich themselves, it is for such persons a very delightful thing to have the reputation of being a friend and associate, or at least an acquaintance of those who are rich. Why, even in England, it is so. There are scarcely a dozen members of the English House of Peers, who can trace back their lineage two hundred years, without coming to some money-making merchant, or lawyer, or speculator of some kind, as the had and founder of their family. . . It is no derogation, then, to the Boston aristocracy, that it rests upon money.
Money is something substantial.
Every body knows that and feels it. Birth is a mere idea, which grows every day more and more intangible.