University of Virginia Library

1. CHAPTER I.

The facility of acquiring wealth in this country; the numerous ways
and means by which the enterprising, the ambitious, the skilful the cunning
and the bold may rise; the countless fields for the display of every
kind of talent, keeps in constant agitation the elements of society, and
prevents the formation of a fixed aristocracy the foundation of which is
stagnation and repose. In this ocean-like restlessness, the lowest are
thrown to the surface, and every successive wave of fortune heaves up new
aspirants for wealth and name. While the elements of society are, with
us, in a state of suspension, like the alluvion of a disturbed stream, in
England they have been for centuries settled, and society there, to pursue
the figure, is like a strong rock composed of a succession of strata, presenting
a formation immovable and imposing. Time will yet effect with us
what it has in all older nations, and produce a social formation, composed
of independent strata. This will not be a recognised hereditary aristocracy,
(for society is not without an aristocracy) like that of England, but it
will be the same thing virtually. It will not be an aristocracy of wealth
so much as an aristocracy of name. That species of aristocracy based
upon wealth, so long as our laws do not recognise the right of primogeniture,
will correct itself. Its existence is intrinsically temporary, and generally
expires with the individual founder of it. But the aristocracy of
which we speak will be based upon precisely the same foundations as that
of England. The starting point of England's proudest names is the conquest.
Noble, indeed, is that family which can trace its pedigree to a
knight of the train of William the Conquerer. This is an aristocracy truly

of birth and lineage in their purest and highest acceptation, and one which
is universally recognised.

Likewise, those who attentively observe the aspects assuming by America's
best society, will not have failed to discover that there is a class forming
and daily strengthening in influence, power and wealth, the individuals
composing which trace their lineage to the old colonial governers; to exiled
cavalier families, and, by far the largest number, to the signers of the
Declaratiou of Independance, and the distinguished Generals and officers
of rank prominent in our revolution! What man, of whatever state he
be a citizen, cannot point to many such families as composing the aristocracy
at this time of their own state. It is unnecessary to mention names,
which have only to be given to receive the unanimous acquiescence of the
people at large, in proof of our position. Now of this class of eminent
names there is in germ one of the proudest aristocracies to which any nation
now existing can lay claim. It is forming and will be powerful, and
universally recognised a century hence as The American Aristocracy, a
name which will be as significant of high meaning as `English Aristocracy'
is now.

But we are not about to give the reader an essay, but a story; so, leaving
the next generation to look after the republican aristocracy which is coming
down to it, we will turn our attention to an individual of a very common
species of aristocracy of the present day, a class to be found in every city
in the land, and in every country village where there is `a rich man,' self-made.

On the ragged outskirts of a little village down east, (by which be it understood
we don't mean the State of Maine, but the region about Cape
Ann), lived a clever poor man, who supported himself and a large family
by `doing chores,' that is, ploughing about for farmers in the spring, helping
the hostler at the village Inn during the summer, mowing at harvest time,
and chopping wood for his neighbors in winter. His name was David
Dalton; but he was better known by the soubriquet of `Lame Davy,' his
gait being and extraordinary compound movement between a limp and a
jerk. His dwelling was a low wretched, unpainted, black tenement, with
a broken roof, a tumble-down chimney, and windows mended with shingles
and old clothes, a panel was out of the front door, and as the back door
had fallen from its hinges and been cut up and burned in a stormy winter's
day when Davy was out of wood, the space was now closed by rough
boards nailed together. Davy's wife was a `managing' woman for a poor
body, and managed to keep her children patched up, and give them something
to eat every day, notwithstanding Davy scarcely ever brought a four-pence-half-penny
into the house; for those he worked for generaly paid
him in a `meal' victuals' and cider and rum.

One blowy, blustering night in January, in a wretched apartment eight
feet by ten, Davy's wife gave birth to her sixth child who in due time was

named, (for we cannot asseverate that he was ever christened) Peter, in
honor of Peter Drew the village grocer; in return for which Davy looked
to receive on occasion sundry favors, such as a quart of molasses, a quarter
of tea, a pound of candles, or a string of herring. Contrary to the custom
of thriving people where poor children are named after them, Peter Drew
took it kindly and every little while would delight his father by asking after
the welfare of his `little namesake.'

Little Peter throve through his weaning as his brothers and sisters had
done, after his eighth month taking pretty much all the care of himself
that ever was taken of him. His favorite companions were the pigs, chickens,
and an old tabby cat of the next door neighbors; and as early as his
fourteenth month he had so initiated himself into the favor of Farmer
Cowden's barn-dog `Bolt.' alongside of whom, after tottling up the yard to
kennel, he would lay stretched in the sun half of a long summer's day,
when the genrous mastiff would always leave a bone of his own bountiful
dinner unpicked for him. Besides this assistance little Davy managed very
adroitly to abstract half of tabby's supper every day, and to cheat the poultry
out of a good share of the crumbs the farmer's maid threw to them.
Thus he throve mainly, and began early to take lessons in personal independance;
figurative to look after number one.

By the time little Peter had attained his third year, `Lame Davy,' so far
as his maintenance was concerned, may have considered his hopeful son as
fairly entered upon the world; that is, having taken upon himself his own
maintenance. The young forager knew the precise moments of meal-time
at every neighbor's table within houses either side of his father's; and
what with getting a slice of bread and butter at one, or a chicken's leg at
another, the gift accompanied with `Here Peter, there's a bone!' to the naked-legged
infant as he poked his carroty head in at the door, the little
scamp of a pensioner grew fat and flourished.

At length when he had reached his ninth year his father sent him to the
town or free-school, to keep him out of mischief; on which occasion Peter
Drew, the grocer, presented his namesake with a spelling book, the boy was
smart, and shrewd, and intelligent enough, and learned fast. At the age of
fourteen, the grocer took him into his store as an assistant, and the result
showed the judiciousness of his choice. From this period young Peter began
to distinguish himself by an extraordinary ambition to be rich. Acquisitiveness
was one of the largest of his phrenological organs, next to self-esteem.
He became a valuable adjunct to the grocer, serving him and
making him no small portion of his income.

As the moral and religous education of our hero had been little regarded
by his parents, he had very little reverence for practised honesty; he
cheated, when he could safely, the immorality of it consisting in being
“found out.” At the age of twenty one Mr. Drew took him into co-partnership,
by which time Peter's father and mother had paid their debt to nature,

with all of his brothers and sisters, who, less skilled in providing for themselves,
had pined and starved, became diseased and died ere the eldest had
had reached his twelfth year. Peter, therefore may be said to have saved
his own life by his superior skill in foraging. This talent he carried with
him into his business, and by picking here and picking there, driving sharp
trades, and taking advantage of men's ignorance, he soon began to lay up
money. By and by Peter Drew fell sick and died, without a will. His
business and property being all in the hands of his partner, the settlement
showed greatly to the surprise of every body (for Peter Drew was thought
to have accumulated great riches) that the heir, who was a poor widowed
sister, would not realize more than fifty dollars; which sum Peter Dalton
paid over to her in person. People shook their heads, and Peter finding
that he was not only unpopular, but that men had no confidence in him, and
that he was too well known there, from his origin upwards, ever to hope to
get into `good society,' which he now aspired to, he resolved to dispose of
his store and stock, and move to Boston and there establish himself in
business.

He came to Boston with seven thousand dollars in cash, and worth in
real-estate situated in his native village, to an equal amount. Here he soon
found a person well established in the wholesale grocery business, who was
willing to receive him as a partner. The new firm with the additional capital
and force extended its operations. Peter, whose ambition to rise in the
world was ever uppermost, soon found on looking about him, that `merchants,'
must own vessels before they can take rank among the leading
men of business. He therefore entered into the shipping business, and
freighted a brig to St. Thomas. His enterprise was successful, and he next
chartered and dispatched a ship to New Orleans for cotton to freight to
Liverpool. The frofits of the home cargo was beyond his expectations. He
now, with his partner built a ship and sent her to India.

His business now grew upon his hands, and his ship returning after a
prosperous voyage, be resolved to build a second, and also to transfer his
business from Long Wharf near the T, to Central Wharf; as being a more
`respectable' location, and, as he said, offering greater facilities for his extended
business operations.

Six years had now elapsed since Peter came to Boston, and he found himself
already a richer man than any body he had left behind in his native
village. But he found that he was by no means rich for Boston. He was of
an aspiring spirit, and inwardly resolved that he would yet be called RICH
on `Change.' He therefore brought all his genius of acquisitiveness into
action to contribute to this desirable result. Successful voyages to India,
and round the `Horn,' were sure and pleasant ways of adding to his eighty
thousand dollars, which he now set down as the minimum of his wealth;
but he was ambitious to increase it yet faster by some bold enterprise. The
idea of marriage happily came into his head, and he resolved to look out

and marry a rich wife. Peter was now in his thirty-fourth year, and though
by no means an Adonis, was presentable. It is true his manners were
rather vulgar, and he was rather sanguinary with the king's English, and he
seldom washed his hands or cleansed his teeth; but gold is a rare refiner of
vulgarity, a panacea for wounded grammar, and will adorn unwashed
hands and gild filthy teeth. Therefore when he offered himself to Miss
Appollonia Bulley, the only daughter of his friend Ira Bulley, of the firm
of Bulley & Broadnax, Ship Chandlers, India Street, he was accepted, and
in due time led the fair maid to the altar. Peter, however, was too wise,
foolishly to marry a fortune still in the father's pockets; for the match being
every way desirable in the eyes of Mr. Bulley, who foresaw in his future
son-in-law one of the richest men in Boston, he settled upon his daughter
on the morning of her marriage, fifty-thousand dollars.

This was a very handsome `operation,' for Peter, and he himself thought
so as he came out of the Suffolk Bank after having transfered this amount
from Ira Bulley's name to his own.

It now became Peter to look out for a dwelling house; and as his ambition
was to get into good society he determined to take one in Colonnade
Row, this being in his estimation a very stylish part of the town. His wife
thought so also; and accordingly a house was rented there, and furnished
in a very showy manner for Mrs. Appollonia Dalton was, in her own notion
a very fashionable person, her great aunt, who was an English woman,
having been first cousin to a Sir George Somebody. It this connexion, and
her own and her husband's money, did not make her rank among the best
society in Boston, pray what considerations should we ask? But it was a
long time before the Boston aristocracy could think so, and then only when
Peter had got to owning several ships, stores and dwellings, and so identified
himself in business with the first merchants of wealth and intelligence
that they could hardly avoid extending to his family (for he had several
children) the courtesies of social life. So at length, therefore, Peter got to
the top bent of his ambition, and was called rich on `Change,' and his wife
was invited to parties in Beacon Street.

To Mrs. Dalton the day on which she received the ticket to her first party
in that aristocratic quarter was an era. She was by no means a lady of
natural refinement, though she had advantages of birth and education to
which Peter had no pretension. Her mother had been a lawyer's daughter,
and her father was a Deacon's son, and he himself had been a colonel in
the militia. Miss Appollonia, therefore, had some pretensions. She had
received the usual “piano-forte education” of her class, and considered
herself quite “accomplished,” and no doubt with her money, she thought
herself “as good as any.” She had certain country cousins, and other poor
relations, to whom she made it a point never to allude to nor hold and correspondence
with. Among these was a Mr. Henry Decker, a poor book-loving
young man who sixteen years ago, just before she married Petor,

had come up to Cambridge and entered as a beneficiary at Harvard. Though
proud of having a cousin in college, she was mortified at having a relation
educated from a benevolent fund, and when he called to visit his uncle, as
he did once or twice during his first term, they treated him with a rudeness
that marked their ill breeding and contemptible pride. He went through
his course of studies with great credit, and after he graduated, paid a visit
to Boston, to say farewell to his rich cousin who had now been two years
Mrs. Dalton. Peter had been already informed of this poor relation of his
wife's, who had been educated by a charity fund, and when his wife now
took him aside in the hall and told him that he had probably come to ask
him to do something to start him in the world, and that the best way to get
rid of him was not to ask him to dinner, he took her spirit and entered into
her wishes so fully, that the insulted young graduate, a very amiable excellent
man, left the house in disgust, resolved never to enter it again.

They heard of him from time to time, as keeping school in his native
town and studying law, but truth to tell, gave themselves very little trouble
about him. In the meanwhile they waxed rich, and, by degrees got themselves
claimed among the “rich people” of Boston. By this unnatural
elevation above their suitable and natural condition in life (for claims to
good society, should be measured by mind and refinement, and not by
money and impudence) exposed them both, to innumerable mortifications
consequent upon their ignorance of the laws of their present condition,
and their grovelling affinity with their previous one which embittered their
triumph and made them contemptible in the eyes of those whose favor
they were nervously solicitous to obtain. Peter also had visits from poor
relations, whom he had never heard of before, but who were keen-scented
in finding him out now that he had got rich; but as he aspired to be thought
of good family and hated whatever was calculated to remind him of his
low origin, he gave them such reception as left them little inclination to
call again to see him. In everything Peter and his wife were well mated,
but in nothing did they more cordially agree than in their hatred of their
poor relations. They lived in horror of their country cousins, and one day
Peter seeing the `poor student', on the opposite side of the street, hastened
home and bade his wife shut the front of the house and see herself whenever
the bell rang, that he was not admitted; for they expected an alderman
and his wife, and the rich Mr. F— and his wife to tea that evening; and
they trembled lest Henry Decker's presence might disgrace their gentility
in the eyes of such stylish people. When, however, Mr. Peter Dalton, got
back to his counting room, who will paint his surprise and displeasure at
seeing there his wife's cousin, in a well brushed seedy hat, and black threadbare
coat (the very personification of a poor scholar) waiting his arrival.
But the events that followed this meeting, are of sufficient importance to
deserve a place in a part by itself, which will be found below.