Deephaven by Sarah Orne Jewett — Read

It was curious to notice, in this quaint little fishing-village by the / sea, how clearly the gradations of society were defined. The place / prided itself most upon having been long ago the residence of one / Governor Chantrey, who was a rich shipowner and East India merchant, and / whose fame and magnificence were almost fabulous. It was a never-ceasing / regret that his house should have burned down after he died, and there / is no doubt that if it were still standing it would rival any ruin of / the Old World.

The elderly people, though laying claim to no slight degree of present / consequence, modestly ignored it, and spoke with pride of the grand way / in which life was carried on by their ancestors, the Deephaven families / of old times. I think Kate and I were assured at least a hundred times / that Governor Chantrey kept a valet, and his wife, Lady Chantrey, kept a / maid, and that the governor had an uncle in England who was a baronet; / and I believe this must have been why our friends felt so deep an / interest in the affairs of the English nobility: they no doubt felt / themselves entitled to seats near the throne itself. There were formerly / five families who kept their coaches in Deephaven; there were balls at / the governor's, and regal entertainments at other of the grand mansions; / there is not a really distinguished person in the country who will not / prove to have been directly or indirectly connected with Deephaven. We / were shown the cellar of the Chantrey house, and the terraces, and a few / clumps of lilacs, and the grand rows of elms. There are still two of the / governor's warehouses left, but his ruined wharves are fast / disappearing, and are almost deserted, except by small barefooted boys / who sit on the edges to fish for sea-perch when the tide comes in. There / is an imposing monument in the burying-ground to the great man and his / amiable consort. I am sure that if there were any surviving relatives of / the governor they would receive in Deephaven far more deference than is / consistent with the principles of a republican government; but the / family became extinct long since, and I have heard, though it is not a / subject that one may speak of lightly, that the sons were unworthy their / noble descent and came to inglorious ends.