For since it is a law of nature, admitting only rare exceptions, that the qualities of the ancestors should be transmitted to the race--the fact seems patent enough, that even allowing equal advantages, a gentleman's son has more chances of growing up a gentleman than the son of a working man.

And though he himself, and his father before him, had both been working men, still, I think, Abel Fletcher never forgot that we originally came of a good stock, and that it pleased him to call me, his only son, after one of our forefathers, not unknown--Phineas Fletcher, who wrote the "Purple Island." Thus it seemed to me, and I doubted not it would to my father, much more reasonable and natural that a boy like John Halifax--in whom from every word he said I detected a mind and breeding above his outward condition--should come of gentle than of boorish blood.
"Then, perhaps," I said, resuming the conversation, "you would not like to follow a trade ?" "Yes, I should.

What would it matter to me?
My father was a gentleman." "And your mother ?" And he turned suddenly round; his cheeks hot, his lips quivering: "She is dead.

I do not like to hear strangers speak about my mother." I asked his pardon.

It was plain he had loved and mourned her; and that circumstances had smothered down his quick boyish feelings into a man's tenacity of betraying where he had loved and mourned.