Springdale was a country town, containing a choice knot of the old, respectable, true-blue, Boston-aristocracy families.  Two or three of them had winter houses in Beacon Street, and went there, after Christmas, to enjoy the lectures, concerts, and select gayeties of the modern Athens; others, like the Fergusons and Seymours, were in intimate relationship with the same circle.

Now, it is well known that the real old true-blue, Simon-pure, Boston family is one whose claims to be considered “the thing,” and the only thing, are somewhat like the claim of apostolic succession in ancient churches.  It is easy to see why certain affluent, cultivated, and eminently well-conducted people should be considered “the thing” in their day and generation; but why they should be considered as the “only thing” is the point insoluble to human reason, and to be received by faith alone; also, why certain other people, equally affluent, cultivated, and well-conducted are not “the thing” is one of the divine mysteries, about which whoso observes Boston society will do well not too curiously to exercise his reason.

These “true-blue” families, however, have claims to respectability; which make them, on the whole, quite a venerable and pleasurable feature of society in our young, topsy-turvy, American community.  Some of them have family records extending clearly back to the settlement of Massachusetts Bay; and the family estate is still on grounds first cleared up by aboriginal settlers.  Being of a Puritan nobility, they have an ancestral record, affording more legitimate subject of family self-esteem than most other nobility.  Their history runs back to an ancestry of unworldly faith and prayer and self-denial, of incorruptible public virtue, sturdy resistance of evil, and pursuit of good.

There is also a literary aroma pervading their circles.  Dim suggestions of “The North American Review,” of “The Dial,” of Cambridge,—­a sort of vague “miel-fleur” of authorship and poetry,—­is supposed to float in the air around them; and it is generally understood that in their homes exist tastes and appreciations denied to less favored regions.  Almost every one of them has its great man,—­its father, grandfather, cousin, or great uncle, who wrote a book, or edited a review, or was a president of the United States, or minister to England, whose opinions are referred to by the family in any discussion, as good Christians quote the Bible.

It is true that, in some few instances, the pleroma of aristocratic dignity undergoes a sort of acetic fermentation, and comes out in ungenial qualities.  Now and then, at a public watering-place, a man or woman appears no otherwise distinguished than by a remarkable talent for being disagreeable; and it is amusing to find, on inquiry, that this repulsiveness of demeanor is entirely on account of belonging to an ancient family.