Next the Senator's son and the son of the Vice-President of the United States--perfectly right, there's no permanency about those little distinctions.

Then you went for the aristocracy; and I thought we had struck oil at last--yes.

We would make a plunge at the Four Hundred, and pull in some ancient lineage, venerable, holy, ineffable, mellow with the antiquity of a hundred and fifty years, disinfected of the ancestral odors of salt-cod and pelts all of a century ago, and unsmirched by a day's work since, and then! why, then the marriages, of course.

But no, along comes a pair a real aristocrats from Europe, and straightway you throw over the half-breeds.
It was awfully discouraging, Aleck! Since then, what a procession! You turned down the baronets for a pair of barons; you turned down the barons for a pair of viscounts; the viscounts for a pair of earls; the earls for a pair of marquises; the marquises for a brace of dukes.

NOW, Aleck, cash in!--you've played the limit.