It is astonishing how much room a richly dressed snob can occupy in a railway car without receiving a request to occupy less, or endangering the welfare of his arrogant eyes.  Mr. Belcher occupied always two seats, and usually four.  It was pitiful to see feeble women look at his abounding supply, then look at him, and then pass on.  It was pitiful to see humbly dressed men do the same.  It was pitiful to see gentlemen put themselves to inconvenience rather than dispute with him his right to all the space he could cover with his luggage and his feet.  Mr. Belcher watched all these exhibitions with supreme satisfaction.  They were a tribute to his commanding personal appearance.  Even the conductors recognized the manner of man with whom they had to deal, and shunned him.  He not only got the worth of his money in his ride, but the worth of the money of several other people.

Arriving at New York, he went directly to the Astor, then the leading hotel of the city.  The clerk not only knew the kind of man who stood before him recording his name, but he knew him; and while he assigned to his betters, men and women, rooms at the top of the house, Mr. Belcher secured, without difficulty, a parlor and bedroom on the second floor.  The arrogant snob was not only at a premium on the railway train, but at the hotel.  When he swaggered into the dining-room, the head waiter took his measure instinctively, and placed him as a figure-head at the top of the hall, where he easily won to himself the most careful and obsequious service, the choicest viands, and a large degree of quiet observation from the curious guests.  In the office, waiters ran for him, hackmen took off their hats to him, his cards were delivered with great promptitude, and even the courtly principal deigned to inquire whether he found everything to his mind.  In short, Mr. Belcher seemed to find that his name was as distinctly “Norval” in New York as in Sevenoaks, and that his “Grampian Hills” were movable eminences that stood around and smiled upon him wherever he went.

Retiring to his room to enjoy in quiet his morning cigar and to look over the papers, his eye was attracted, among the “personals,” to an item which read as follows: 

“Col.  Robert Belcher, the rich and well-known manufacturer of Sevenoaks, and the maker of the celebrated Belcher rifle, has arrived in town, and occupies a suite of apartments at the Astor.”

His title, he was aware, had been manufactured, in order to give the highest significance to the item, by the enterprising reporter, but it pleased him.  The reporter, associating his name with fire-arms, had chosen a military title, in accordance with the custom which makes “commodores” of enterprising landsmen who build and manage lines of marine transportation and travel, and “bosses” of men who control election gangs, employed to dig the dirty channels to political success.