"
"They seem to think," she said, "that Northerners have no parents--that
they are made chemically."
This does not imply, however, that well-bred Northerners are excluded
from society. Even if they are well off they may get into society; for
though money does not count in one's favor in such a town, it does not
count against one. The social requirement of the place is simple. If
people are "nice people," that is enough.
Of course, however, it is one thing to be admitted to Virginia society
and another to belong to it by right. A case in point is that of a lady
visiting in a Virginia city who, while calling at the house of some
"F.F.V's," was asked by a little girl, the daughter of the house, where
she had been born.
"Mawtha," said the little girl's mother, after the caller had departed,
"you must not ask people where they were bo'n. If they were bo'n in
Va'ginia they will tell you so without asking, and if they weren't bo'n
in Va'ginia it's very embarrassing."
Some of the old families of the inner circle are in a tragic state of
decay, owing to inbreeding; others, in a more wholesome physical and
mental condition, are perpetually wrestling with the heritage of poverty
left over from the War--"too proud to whitewash and too poor to
paint"--clinging desperately to the old acres, and to the old houses
which are like beautiful, tired ancestral ghosts.
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