"Let's have
a party, and give her a chance to show herself and see some of the young
folks."

The Colonel was not very clear-headed, and he thought, naturally enough,
that the party was his own suggestion, because his remark led to the
first starting of the idea. He entered into the plan, therefore, with a
feeling of pride as well as pleasure, and the great project was resolved
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 of the present family the line is clear again). Mrs. Saymore,
the tailor's wife, was not invited, because her husband mended clothes.
If he had confined h