You must make your style of living, Mrs.Chapman said, keep pace with the progress of the family.

And it would not do to let those new, rich, and stylish people who were coming up from New York get ahead of you in the way of elegance.
Mrs.Chapman no longer condescended to prepare the sausage meat and pumpkin pies; in a word, to do the work of her own kitchen.

She could afford, she said, to keep two "helps," a cook and a chambermaid, to take it easy and put on the lady, and to give evening parties that quite outdid in the way of nice little suppers anything their neighbors could give.

There was, however, a number of people in Nyack who shook their heads at the pretensions of the Chapmans; said they were putting on too many airs, and made no response to Mrs.Chapman's invitations.

Others, when a little scandal was necessary to keep up the interest of an evening, would insinuate that they had "originally" been very common and vulgar people.