called poor; that is to say, he had no known bank-stock, did not own a
lot on the island, was director of neither bank nor insurance company,
and lived in a modest two-story house, in White street. It is true his
practice supported his family, and enabled him to invest in bonds and
mortgages two or three thousand a-year; and he owned the fee of some
fifteen or eighteen farms in Orange county, that were falling in from
three-lives leases, and which had been in his family ever since the
seventeenth century. But, at a period of prosperity like that which
prevailed in 1832, 3, 4, 5, and 6, the hereditary dollar was not worth
more than twelve and a half cents, as compared with the "inventoried"
dollar. As there is something, after all, in a historical name, and the
Caverleys [sic] still had the best of it, in the way of society, Eudosia was
permitted to continue the visits in White street, even after her own family
were in full possession in Broadway, and Henry Halfacre, Esq., had got
to be enumerated among the Manhattan nabobs. Clara Caverly was in
Broadway when Honor O'Flagherty arrived with me, out of breath, in
consequence of the shortness of her legs, and the necessity of making
up for lost time.

{owned the fee...falling in from three-life leases = i.e., Mr. Caverly
owned farms in Orange County that had been leased out for long
periods (the lives of three persons named at the moment the lease was
granted) but which were now about to revert to him--such long-term
leases, in the Hudson Valley, led to the so-called anti-rent war that was
breaking out at the time Cooper wrote this book; twelve and a half
cents = an English shilling, still often used in conversation in America;
nabobs = rich men (usually businessmen of recent affluence)}

"There, Miss Dosie," cried the exulting housemaid, for such was
Honor's domestic rank, though preferred to so honorable and