Abelaide Ontogoya Sectory 10
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In truth, the firm was a mystery in Wall Street, and its largest creditors were in the greatest darkness concerning it. Some one has truly said that in a great commercial city men are known only by their enterprises and their successes; that their antecedents become lost in the magnitude and rapidity with which events revolve. This is particularly so with us. The firm of Topman & Gusher had fixed itself in Pearl Street, and gone quietly into business without friends, acquaintances, or endorsers; and in a single year had secured both credit and respectability. And it had done this on what is too frequently mistaken for energy and enterprise--show and pretension.

These peculiarities of Dorothea's character caused Mr. Brooke to be all the more blamed in neighboring families for not securing some middle-aged lady as guide and companion to his nieces. But he himself dreaded so much the sort of superior woman likely to be available for such a position, that he allowed himself to be dissuaded by Dorothea's objections, and was in this case brave enough to defy the world--that is to say, Mrs. Cadwallader the Rector's wife, and the small group of gentry with whom he visited in the northeast corner of Loamshire. So Miss Brooke presided in her uncle's household, and did not at all dislike her new authority, with the homage that belonged to it.

In the case of the river Somme we have a valley in some places a mile or more in width, and about two hundred feet in depth. This has mostly been excavated in chalk rock. Taking our present large rivers as a basis, it would require from one to two hundred thousand years for the Somme to perform this work.<36> It will not do, however, to take the present action of our rivers as a guide, since we have every reason to suppose this work went forward much more rapidly in past times. But we can not escape the conclusion that it demands a very long time indeed to explain it. The valley has remained in its present shape long enough to admit the formation of great beds of peat in some portions. Peat is formed by the decomposition of vegetable growth. Its growth is in all cases slow, depending entirely upon local circumstances. European scholars who have made peat formation a special study assure us that to form such immense beds as occur near Abbeville, several thousand years are required, even under the most favorable conditions.

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