were unable to write a simple business letter without
committing errors of orthography of which any one but Artemus Ward or
Jeames de la Pluche might well feel ashamed.

Nearly all the leading spirits of this strangely-assorted oligarchy were
either wealthy or on the direct road to wealth. Being comfortably
provided for at the public cost, in the form of fat offices or wild
lands, or both, they assumed a swelling port, and aped, as best they
knew how, the manners and customs of the upper classes in Great Britain.
They built their dwellings in imitation of old-fashioned English
manor-houses, with a variety of wings and gables, and with broad
entrance halls which in an emergency might have served the purpose of
presence-chambers. They dined long and late, and with much old-world
pomp and ceremonial. They drove out in coaches emblazoned with heraldic
bearings, and attended by broad-calved flunkeys in family livery.
Certain social observances of the early Georgian era, long since effete
and worn out in England, flourished in the social life of Little York
down to a period within the memory of many persons who are still living.
The aristocratic clique which preserved these customs was in the highest
degree rigid and exclusive. No outsider was admitted into the charmed
circle unless he came duly ticketed and accredited. The attempt to
transplant the usages of an old and advanced state of society into the
primitive streets and lanes of such places as York, Kingston, and
Woodstock was for a time more successful than might be supposed. Such of
the families as had been to the manner born carried off these
observances with considerable grace. They had brought their traditions
with them across the Atlantic, and though such traditions were not well
suited to the genius of a young and sparsely-settled colony, they were
at least maintained with some regard to the sources whence they had been
derived. With the pretenders who formed a portion of the clique, and who
had been admitted into it for special political reasons, the attempt to
copy the habits of their social superiors was, generally speaking, less
satisfactory. There was, in truth, an inner social circle which these
latter were never invited to join. They, however, enjoyed all the
political and pecuniary advantages arising from their connection, and
were not easily distinguishable by outsiders from the very head and
front of the organization.

So far as to the wealthy members