He doesn't appreciate the value of those things in advancing a career.

He thinks a career is made by work only.

But I'll show him! I'll make his house the center of the university!" Mrs.Dorsey had "Villa d'Orsay" carved on the stone pillars of her great wrought-iron gates, to remind the populace that, while her late father-in-law, "Buck" Dorsey, was the plainest of butchers and meat packers, his ancestry was of the proudest.

With the rise of its "upper class" Saint X had gone in diligently for genealogy, had developed reverence for "tradition" and "blood," had established a Society of Family Histories, a chapter of the Colonial Dames, another of Daughters of the Revolution, and was in a fair way to rival the seaboard cities in devotion to the imported follies and frauds of "family." Dory at first indulged his sense of humor upon their Dorsey or d'Orsay finery.

It seemed to him they must choose between making a joke of it and having it make a joke of them.