“There is one thing you don’t seem to see at all, Aunt,” he said. “That is, that Dearborn County is relatively not altogether the most important section of the Republic, and that it is quite possible for a man to win public recognition or attain professional distinction in other communities which might reconcile him to a loss of prestige here. It may sound like heresy to you, but I am free to admit that the good opinion of the business men of New York City, where I am regarded as a successful sort of man, seems to me to outweigh all possible questions as to how I am regarded by Elhanan Pratt and Le-ander Crump and--and that Baptist gentleman, for instance, whom you had here to-day. The world has grown so large, my dear aunt, since your day, that there are thousands upon thousands of Americans now who go all their lives without ever once thinking about Dearborn County’s opinion. Of course I can understand how deeply you must feel what you regard as a social decline in the eyes of your neighbours. But truly, it does not specially affect me. They are not my neighbours; if I seem to them to be of less importance than I was in my boyhood, when I had a pony, I can’t help it, and I am sure I don’t want to. Frankly, to use my mother’s old phrase, I don’t care a cotton hat for their opinion good, bad, or indifferent. It is this, I think, which you leave out of your calculation.” Miss Sabrina had listened, with the Book opened only by a finger’s width. The elaborate irony of her nephew’s words had escaped her, but she saw a gleam of hope in his willingness to discuss the matter at all. “But then this is the home o’ the Fairchilds; the fam’ly belongs to Dearborn Caounty; father was allus spoken of ez Seth Fairchild o’ Dearborn, jis’ as much ez--ez Silas Wright o’ Dutchess.” “Of course that last is a powerful argument,” said Albert with a furtive smile twitching at the corners of his mouth. “But, after all, the county family idea doesn’t seem to attract me much. Why, aunt, do you know that your grandfather Roger was a journeyman shoemaker, who walked all the way here from Providence. There was nothing incongruous in his son becoming a Senator. Very well; if you have a state of society where sudden elevations of this sort occur, there will inevitably be corresponding descents--just as lean streaks alternate with fat in the bacon of commerce. The Fairchilds went up--they, come down. They have exhausted the soil. Do you see?” “Nao! I don’t see a bit! ’N’ I b’lieve at heart you’re jis’ ez praoud ez I be!” “Proud? Yes! Proud of myself, proud of my practice, proud of my position. But proud because three or four hundred dull countrymen, seeing my cows sleek, my harness glossy, my farm well in order, and knowing that my grandfather had been a State Senator, would consider me a ‘likely ’ man--no, not at all.” Albert rose at this to go, and added, as he turned the door-knob: