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1Author:  Briggs Charles F. (Charles Frederick) 1804-1877Add
 Title:  The Adventures of Harry Franco  
 Published:  1997 
 Subjects:  University of Virginia Library, Modern English collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 
 Description: It is a generally received opinion in some parts of the world, that a man must of necessity have had ancestors; but, in our truly independent country, we contrive to get along very well without them. That strange race, called Aristocrats, it is said, consider every body as nobody, unless they can boast of at least a dozen ancestors. These lofty people would have scorned an alliance with a parvenu like Adam, of course. What a fortunate circumstance for their high mightinesses, that they were not born in the early ages. No antediluvian family would have been entitled to the slightest consideration from them. When the world was only two thousand years old, it is melancholy to reflect, its surface was covered with nobodies; men of yesterday, without an ancestry worth speaking of. It is not to be wondered at, that such a set of upstarts should have caused the flood; nothing less would have washed away their vulgarity, to say nothing of their sins. Augustus de Satinett was a jobber; a choicer spirit the region of Hanover square boasted not. Pearl street and Maiden Lane may have known his equal, his superior never. He had risen from junior clerk to junior partner, in one of the oldest firms. The best blood of the revolution flowed in his veins; his mother was a Van Buster, his father a de Satinett; a more remote ancestry, or a more noble, it were vain to desire. Augustus had a noble soul, it was a seven quarter full; his virtues were all his own, and they were dyed in the wool; his vices were those of his age—they were dyed in the cloth.
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