And I am the more bound to consider all this while it is yet time, because I heard you state that Miss Ashleigh had a fortune, was what would be here termed an heiress.

And the full consciousness that whatever fame one in my profession may live to acquire, does not open those vistas of social power and grandeur which are opened by professions to my eyes less noble in themselves,--that full consciousness, I say, was forced upon me by certain words of your own.
For the rest, you know my descent is sufficiently recognized as that amidst well-born gentry to have rendered me no mesalliance to families the most proud of their ancestry, if I had kept my hereditary estate and avoided the career that makes me useful to man.

But I acknowledge that on entering a profession such as mine--entering any profession except that of arms or the senate--all leave their pedigree at its door, an erased or dead letter.

All must come as equals, high-born or low-born, into that arena in which men ask aid from a man as he makes himself; to them his dead forefathers are idle dust.

Therefore, to the advantage of birth I cease to have a claim.