{"product_id":"2940013693036","title":"The Old Maid","description":"In the old New York of the 'fifties a few families ruled, in simplicity\u003cbr\u003eand affluence. Of these were the Ralstons.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe sturdy English and the rubicund and heavier Dutch had mingled to\u003cbr\u003eproduce a prosperous, prudent and yet lavish society. To \"do things\u003cbr\u003ehandsomely\" had always been a fundamental principle in this cautious\u003cbr\u003eworld, built up on the fortunes of bankers, India merchants,\u003cbr\u003eship-builders and ship-chandlers. Those well-fed slow-moving people, who\u003cbr\u003eseemed irritable and dyspeptic to European eyes only because the caprices\u003cbr\u003eof the climate had stripped them of superfluous flesh, and strung their\u003cbr\u003enerves a little tighter, lived in a genteel monotony of which the surface\u003cbr\u003ewas never stirred by the dumb dramas now and then enacted underground.\u003cbr\u003eSensitive souls in those days were like muted key-boards, on which Fate\u003cbr\u003eplayed without a sound.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn this compact society, built of solidly welded blocks, one of the\u003cbr\u003elargest areas was filled by the Ralstons and their ramifications. The\u003cbr\u003eRalstons were of middle-class English stock. They had not come to the\u003cbr\u003eColonies to die for a creed but to live for a bank-account. The result\u003cbr\u003ehad been beyond their hopes, and their religion was tinged by their\u003cbr\u003esuccess. An edulcorated Church of England which, under the conciliatory\u003cbr\u003ename of the \"Episcopal Church of the United States of America,\" left out\u003cbr\u003ethe coarser allusions in the Marriage Service, slid over the comminatory\u003cbr\u003epassages in the Athanasian Creed, and thought it more respectful to say\u003cbr\u003e\"Our Father who\" than \"which\" in the Lord's Prayer, was exactly suited to\u003cbr\u003ethe spirit of compromise whereon the Ralstons had built themselves up.\u003cbr\u003eThere was in all the tribe the same instinctive recoil from new religions\u003cbr\u003eas from unaccounted-for people. Institutional to the core, they\u003cbr\u003erepresented the conservative element that holds new societies together as\u003cbr\u003eseaplants bind the seashore.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCompared with the Ralstons, even such traditionalists as the Lovells, the\u003cbr\u003eHalseys or the Vandergraves appeared careless, indifferent to money,\u003cbr\u003ealmost reckless in their impulses and indecisions. Old John Frederick\u003cbr\u003eRalston, the stout founder of the race, had perceived the difference, and\u003cbr\u003eemphasized it to his son, Frederick John, in whom he had scented a faint\u003cbr\u003eleaning toward the untried and unprofitable.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"You let the Lannings and the Dagonets and the Spenders take risks and\u003cbr\u003efly kites. It's the county-family blood in 'em: we've nothing to do with\u003cbr\u003ethat. Look how they're petering out already--the men, I mean. Let your\u003cbr\u003eboys marry their girls, if you like (they're wholesome and handsome);\u003cbr\u003ethough I'd sooner see my grandsons take a Lovell or a Vandergrave, or any\u003cbr\u003eof our own kind. But don't let your sons go mooning around after their\u003cbr\u003eyoung fellows, horse-racing, and running down south to those d---d\u003cbr\u003eSprings, and gambling at New Orleans, and all the rest of it. That's how\u003cbr\u003eyou'll build up the family, and keep the weather out. The way we've\u003cbr\u003ealways done it.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFrederick John listened, obeyed, married a Halsey, and passively followed\u003cbr\u003ein his father's steps. He belonged to the cautious generation of New York\u003cbr\u003egentleman who revered Hamilton and served Jefferson, who longed to lay\u003cbr\u003eout New York like Washington, and who laid it out instead like a\u003cbr\u003egridiron, lest they should be thought \"undemocratic\" by people they\u003cbr\u003esecretly looked down upon. Shopkeepers to the marrow, they put in their\u003cbr\u003ewindows the wares there was most demand for, keeping their private\u003cbr\u003eopinions for the back-shop, where through lack of use, they gradually\u003cbr\u003elost substance and colour.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe fourth generation of Ralstons had nothing left in the way of\u003cbr\u003econvictions save an acute sense of honour in private and business\u003cbr\u003ematters; on the life of the community and the state they took their daily\u003cbr\u003eviews from the newspapers, and the newspapers they already despised. The\u003cbr\u003eRalstons had done little to shape the destiny of their country, except to\u003cbr\u003efinance the Cause when it had become safe to do so. They were related to\u003cbr\u003emany of the great men who had built the Republic; but no Ralston had so\u003cbr\u003efar committed himself as to be great. As old John Frederick said, it was\u003cbr\u003esafer to be satisfied with three per cent: they regarded heroism as a\u003cbr\u003eform of gambling. Yet by merely being so numerous and so similar they had\u003cbr\u003ecome to have a weight in the community. People said: \"The Ralstons\" when\u003cbr\u003ethey wished to invoke a precedent. This attribution of authority had\u003cbr\u003egradually convinced the third generation of its collective importance,\u003cbr\u003eand the fourth, to which Delia Ralston's husband belonged, had the ease\u003cbr\u003eand simplicity of a ruling class.","brand":"WDS Publishing","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47083156439280,"sku":"2940013693036","price":0.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940013693036_p0.jpg?v=1763584447","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940013693036","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}