human
Your cousin has been telling me of your relatives in New York, and she told me more of yourself than you ever did.
gpt
Very likely. Trust your friends for that. I hope she gave me a good character.
human
Oh, she has the greatest admiration for you, and she said the family have the highest expectations of your career. Why didn't you tell me you were the child of such hopes? It half frightened me.
gpt
It must be appalling. What did she say of my uncle and aunts?
human
Oh, I cannot tell you, except that she raised an image in my mind of an awful vision of ancient family and exclusiveness, the most fastidious, delightful, conventional people, she said, very old family, looked down upon Washington Irving, don't you know, because he wrote. I suppose she wanted to impress me with the value of the prize I've drawn, dear. But I should like you just as well if your connections had not looked down on Irving. Are they so very high and mighty?
gpt
Oh, dear, no. Much like other people. My aunts are the dearest old ladies, just a little nearsighted, you know, about seeing people that are not--well, of course, they live in a rather small world. My uncle is a bachelor, rather particular, not what you would call a genial old man; been abroad a good deal, and moved mostly in our set; sometimes I think he cares more for his descent than for his position at the bar, which is a very respectable one, by the way. You know what an old bachelor is who never has had anybody to shake him out of his contemplation of his family?
human
Do you think, said Irene, a little anxiously, letting her hand rest a moment upon Stanhope's,
gpt
Of course they will like you. Everybody likes you. The aunts are just a little old-fashioned, that is all. Habit has made them draw a social circle with a small radius. Some have one kind of circle, some another. Of course my aunts are sorry for any one who is not descended from the Van Schlovenhovens--the old Van Schlovenhoven had the first brewery of the colony in the time of Peter Stuyvesant. In New York it's a family matter, in Philadelphia it's geographical. There it's a question whether you live within the lines of Chestnut Street and Spruce Street--outside of these in the city you are socially impossible: Mrs. Cortlandt told me that two Philadelphia ladies who had become great friends at a summer resort--one lived within and the other without the charmed lines--went back to town together in the autumn. At the station when they parted, the 'inside' lady said to the other: 'Good-by. It has been such a pleasure to know you! I suppose I shall see you sometimes at Moneymaker's!' Moneymaker's is the Bon Marche of Philadelphia.