Sufficient has been ascertained, however, to leave no doubt of the continual progress of the family in possessions, social dignity, and public consequence" ...

"The first man in New Amsterdam who had a family carriage" ...

"The chief people of the city and province, and stately visitors from the Old World, were often grouped together under this roof"....
Such august and ample phrases could but nourish and exalt her sense of worthiness; could but add to her growing sense of satisfaction.
She closed the ceremonious volume, and her eyes, lifting, rested for a gratifying moment on a framed steel engraving from the painting of Abraham De Peyster, Mayor of New York from 1691 to 1693.

The picture pleased her, with its aristocratically hooked nose, its full wig, its smile of amiable condescension.

But fortunately she had forgotten, or perhaps preferred not to learn, that when this ancestor was New York's foremost figure, the city had had within its domain somewhat less than one one-thousandth of its present subjects.
And then her eyes wandered to the three-quarters portrait of herself by M.Dubois, hung temporarily in this room.