“Since it is a law of nature, admitting only rare exceptions, that the qualities of the ancestors should be transmitted to the race, — the fact seems patent enough, that even allowing equal advantages, a gentleman's son has more chances of growing up a gentleman than the son of a working man. And though he himself, and his father before him, had both been working men, still, I think, Abel Fletcher never forgot that we originally came of a good stock, and that it pleased him to call me, his only son, after one of our forefathers, not unknown — Phineas Fletcher, who wrote the "Purple Island."”