Mr. Holmes was one of the principal men in that part of the world. In addition to the very fine farm on which he lived, he was the owner of two or three others, and had some very comfortable snug sums invested in mortgages, and some stocks. Mr. Holmes’ opinion on any subject was then that of a man entitled to be heard, for it is astonishing what an additional force of wisdom those little things called dollars, when counted in tens of thousands, and especially in hundreds of thousands, lend to their possessor. Should it chance that they should mount into millions, Solomon himself, could he revisit the earth, would not be more regarded than are their fortunate possessors--their words are cherished as the very oracles of wisdom, and their breath is as it were the divine afflatus--men who possess them may pass their lives without contributing in the slightest degree to the comfort or happiness of their fellow men, the very incarnation of selfish avarice; but should they after their death, unable to carry it with them, build and endow an hospital, a college or a library, their names immediately ascend to heaven in grateful pæans for their wondrous bounties, and they live in brick and marble for ages, whilst those whose lives have been past in one constant act of beneficence to their fellows, sink into their graves and are forgotten in a month. Mr. Holmes’ opinions then, were of weight in the circle in which he moved, and his good lady re-echoing them, they bore down all feeling which the natural rancor of Miss Bitterly and the contracted views of Mrs. Hardmoney might have engendered in the breasts of the females around, against our sweet Maria. None of them had yet seen her; she had not been a month in their neighborhood, but they all had heard something good about her, and after wondering why the Dawsons had not yet been seen in any place of worship, and whether they didn’t mean to go, and if they did which--the conversation turned into other channels, and Maggie Chatterton at last yielded to the solicitations of the children to go over into their corner and tell them “that nice story.”