I was reminded of this some years ago by a paragraph in one of the county newspapers that sometimes come under my observation. It was[99] a very commonplace paragraph; indeed, it was in the nature of an advertisement—an announcement of the fact that orders for "gilt-edged butter" from the Jersey⁴ farm on the Tomlinson Place should be left at the drugstore in Rockville, where the first that came would be the first served. This businesslike notice was signed by Ferris Trunion. The name was not only peculiar⁵, but new to me; but this was of no importance at all. The fact that struck me was the bald and bold announcement that the Tomlinson Place was the site and centre of trading and other commercial transactions in butter. I can only imagine what effect this announcement would have had on my grandmother, who died years ago, and on some other old people I used to know. Certainly they would have been horrified⁶; and no wonder, for when they were in their prime the Tomlinson Place was the seat of all that was high, and mighty⁷, and grand, in the social world in the neighborhood of Rockville. I remember that everybody stood in awe⁸ of the Tomlinsons. Just why this was so, I never could make out. They were very rich;[100] the Place embraced several thousand acres; but if the impressions made on me when a child are worth anything, they were extremely simple in their ways. Though, no doubt, they could be formal and conventional enough when occasion required.

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