In a country destitute of an hereditary aristocracy, and where the poorest emigrant, by industry and prudence, may rise to wealth and political importance, the appearance which individuals make, and the style in which they live, determine their claims to superiority with the public, chiefly composed of the same elements with themselves. The aristocracy of England may be divided into three distinct classes,—that of family, of wealth, and of talent,—all powerful in their order. The one which ranks the last should hold its place with the first, for it originally produced it; and the second, which is far inferior to the last, is likewise able to buy the first. The heads of old families are more tolerant to the great men of genius than they are to the accumulators of riches; and a wide distinction is made by them between the purse-proud millionaire and the poor man of genius, whose refined tastes and feelings are more in unison with their own. In Canada, the man of wealth has it all his own way; his dollars are irresistible, and the money makes the man. Fine clothes are there supposed to express the wealth of the possessor; and a lady’s gown determines her right to the title, which, after all, presents the lowest claims to gentility. A runaway thief may wear a fashionably cut coat, and a well-paid domestic flaunt in silks and satins. Now, Flora knew nothing of all this; and she committed a great error in choosing neat and respectable every-day clothing. The handsome, and the very ordinary, would have answered her purpose much better. If “necessity is the mother of invention,” experience is the handmaid of wisdom, and her garments fit well. Flora was as yet a novice to the world and its ways. She had much to learn from a stern and faithful preceptress, in a cold, calculating school. CHAPTER VII. HOW MISS WILHELMINA CARR AND FLORA BECAME ACQUAINTED. Among the many persons who called upon Flora to talk over her projected emigration was a Miss Wilhelmina Carr—a being so odd, so wayward, so unlike the common run of mortals, that we must endeavour to give a slight sketch of her to our readers. We do not possess sufficient artistic skill to do Miss Wilhelmina justice; for if she had not actually lived and walked the earth, and if we had not seen her with our own eyes, and heard her with our own ears, we should have considered her a very improbable, if not an impossible, variety of the human species feminine. We have met with many absurd people in our journey through life, but a more eccentric individual never before nor since has come under our immediate observation. Flora’s means were far too limited for her to entertain company. Her visitors were confined entirely to her own family, and a few old and chosen friends, with whom she had been intimate from childhood. How, then, did she become acquainted with this lady? Oddly enough; for everything connected with Miss Carr was odd, and out of the common way.