Page:About people (IA aboutpeople00well).pdf/180

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ABOUT PEOPLE.

we care too often about who they are, rather than what they are.

An Englishman once said he had heard more concerning first families in America than in his own country. Most naturally was it so, for our peerage is ever changing. Lowell's poems and somebody's bitters may be advertised on the same page of the "Atlantic." "Family-trees" are no longer content with the "Mayflower" as a starting-point; but seek for social status in Saxon and Norman days, and trace their coat of arms to antediluvian fancies. Better an honest modern invention, like that of the New York millionnaire, who, making his fortune by tobacco, chose for his insignia three tobacco leaves, with a Latin inscription, which, rendered into English, ran —


"Snuff has bought it; Who'd have thought it?"


Select summer hotels afford the best exemplifications of self-regard, for in them each one

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