Theodore Winthrop

“ Jane Billop marched up to the portrait, and turned it with its face toward the wall.
“He needn’t look at me, and tell me I am courting Mr. Edwin Brothertoft,” she said to herself. “I know I am, and I mean to have him. He is lovely; but I almost hate him. He makes me feel ignorant and coarse and mean. I don’t want to be the kind of woman he has been talking to with that deferential address. But I suppose this elegant manner is all put on, and he is really just like other people. He seems to be pretty confident of carrying the world before him. We shall be the great people of the Province. ”

“ She sealed this note with Colonel Billop’s frank motto, “Per omnia ad opes,” and despatched it.
Edwin was delighted at the prospect of recovering his ancestor. It is a mighty influence when the portrait of a noble forefather puts its eye on one who wears his name, and says, by the language of an unchanging look: “I was a Radical in my day; be thou the same in thine! I turned my back upon the old tyrannies and heresies, and struck for the new liberties and beliefs; my liberty and belief are doubtless already tyranny and heresy to thine age; strike thou for the new! ”

“ There is never joy in Wall Street now such as filled the heart of Edwin Brothertoft on that morning of a bygone century. The Billops of our time live a league up town, and plot on Murray Hill for lovers of good family. ”